People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
| People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm | ||||
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| Studio album from A Tribe Called Quest | ||||
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Publication |
April 17, 1990 |
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| Label (s) | Jive Records | |||
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Format (s) |
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Title (number) |
14th |
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running time |
64'17 ″ |
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| occupation |
Q-Tip ( voc ) Phife Dawg ( voc ) Jarobi White ( voc ) Ali Shaheed Muhammad ( DJ ) |
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Studio (s) |
Calliope Studios, Battery Studios and Dumb DJ Towha's DewDrop Inn |
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People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm is the debut album by the US hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest . It was released on April 17, 1990 by Jive Records . As singles titles were Bonita Applebum , Can I Kick It? and I Left My Wallet in El Segundo .
The album received mostly good to very good reviews in the music press, but was not a commercial success.
On 19 January 1996 was People's Instinctive Travels from the RIAA to Gold Status awarded. It was founded in 1998 by the magazine The Source in the list of the 100 best rap albums recorded, as one of three ATCQ albums next to The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders .
History of origin
After A Tribe Called Quest member Q-Tip had appeared on the highly acclaimed debut albums by the Jungle Brothers and De La Souls , interest in the still unknown group increased. In early 1989 signed ATCQ an agreement for a demo with Geffen Records , after which a recording tape was produced with five songs, among which the later classics avancierenden Description of A Fool , I Left My Wallet in El Segundo and Can I Kick It? (based on a Lou Reed sample).
Geffen decided against further collaboration with ATCQ , but allowed the group to keep the rights to the songs they had already produced. Several other labels offered contracts to the four-member tribe . Finally, the group accepted the offer of the then independent label Jive Records , which had previously made other hip-hop artists known, including Boogie Down Productions and Whodini .
A Tribe Called Quest worked on their debut album in several New York studios under the direction of DJ Red Alert . The main production location was the legendary Calliope Studios , where several other albums from the so-called golden era of hip-hop were recorded.
On April 17, 1990, the album was released, which was entitled People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm .
content
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On People's Instinctive Travels ... by far the most raps are contributed by Q-Tip. While Jarobi White, who left the group shortly after the album was released, doesn't rap at all, Phife Dawg can only be heard on five of the fourteen songs. The French rapper Lucien Revolucien and the producer of the album DJ Red Alert have guest appearances .
topics and texts
On their debut album, A Tribe Called Quest deal with socially critical issues on some of the songs, but mostly tell stories that seem irrelevant and often adolescent .
The theme of I Left My Wallet in El Segundo, rapped by Q-Tip, is a fictional vacation trip from New York City to El Segundo, California, and back. Pubic Enemy ( dt . About pubic enemy ) deals with the issue STDs on humorous way. Ham'n'Eggs ( ham and eggs ), in turn, was the All-Music Guide -Rezensenten John Bush as "perhaps the craziest theme that is on a rap song had heard up until then “.
The song Bonita Applebum is a love song whose dominant theme is lust . The phonetics of the title of the song should create the imagination of a good-looking woman in the listener's mind. In addition, the listener is given a sensual, dazed feeling of intoxication , which is underlined by the sample of a sitar (from the song Memory Lane by the band Rotary Connection ) in the chorus.
According to AMG reviewer Jason Elias, Bonita Applebum proves that "you didn't need humiliation or the sound of pistol bullets to make a great rap song." Elias continues to compare the title with the jazz radio of the 1970s produced by artists like Roy Ayers .
The same Ayers is featured on Bonita Applebum with a sample from his song Daylight .
In addition to the songs that focus on quite irrelevant topics, there are some titles on People's Instinctive Travels for social criticism , or at least for serious topics. Description of a Fool criticizes violent people, while Youthful Expression is about how teenagers take responsibility for their own lives.
Overall, People's Instinctive Travels is as humorous and positive as the De La Soul debut 3 Feet High and Rising from 1988. It is considered less influential than this and the second tribe album The Low End Theory, which followed in 1991 .
Samples
Most of the samples come from 1970s funk and jazz . Some of the song structures also come from rock music. The Can I Kick It? for sampling Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side from 1972 on this song .
| Track | title | Samples |
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| 1 | Push It Along |
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| 2 | Luck of Lucien |
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| 3 | After hours |
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| 4th | Footprints |
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| 5 | I Left My Wallet in El Segundo |
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| 6th | Pubic Enemy |
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| 7th | Bonita Applebum |
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| 8th | Can I Kick It? |
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| 9 | Youthful Expression |
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| 10 | Rhythm (Devoted to the Art of Moving Butts) |
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| 11 | Mr. Muhammad |
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| 12 | Ham 'N' Eggs |
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| 13 | Go ahead in the rain |
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| 14th | Description of a fool |
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Reviews
Contemporary reviews
The Rolling Stone awards People's Instinctive Travels three out of five possible stars, which stands for a mediocre to good album. The reviewer Chuck Eddy criticizes the album as "one of the least danceable hip-hop albums" and as "pseudo-jazz". The “ yarn stories” that the tribe tell would “quickly get boring”. People's Instinctive Travels received four stars out of five
in the 1992 edition of Rolling Stone Album Guide , an annual book release of CD reviews .
The Source received the album very positively : It was the third album ever to receive the highest rating of five mics . This rating was very popular at the time People's Instinctive Travels was published.
Influential music journalist Robert Christgau finally praised several songs and the album as a whole. He awarded the grade B + .
Leaderboards
Like the later tribe albums The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders , People's Instinctive Travels can be found on many best-of lists, some of which relate to the year of release and some to longer periods of time.
At the end of 1991, many magazines voted the ATCQ debut in their "Albums of the Year"; among them were the Village Voice from New York (18th place), the British magazine Face (3rd place) and the German magazine Spex (also 3rd place). In other magazines from Europe, too, the debut was placed among the ten best music albums of the year.
People's Instinctive Travels… is also mentioned more often in annual best-of lists . In 1996, British magazine Mixmag voted it 36th of the 100 best dance albums of all time . The German magazine Zündfunk honored it with 24th place in the list of the 100 best albums of the 90s . It was voted one of the 100 best rap albums in 1998 by the US hip-hop magazine The Source , which was highly regarded in the 1990s .
The album also received a place in the 2005 book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die by the American Robert Dimery. The website acclaimedmusic.net leads People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm on the 737th place in the "most recommended albums of all time".
Charts
The album debuted on both the top R&B / Hip Hop charts and the Billboard 200 after its release on April 17, 1990 . It was on the Billboard charts for 19 weeks, with the highest position being 91st. Among the R&B and hip-hop albums, it lasted for 44 weeks and came in at a maximum of 23rd place.
The three single releases of the album could all be placed in the top 10 of the Hot R & B / Hip Hop Singles & Tracks or the Hot Rap Singles .
Chart positions (album)
| year | album | position | |
| Billboard 200 | Top R&B / Hip Hop albums | ||
| 1990 | People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm | # 91 | # 23 |
Chart positions (singles)
| year | song | Chart position | |||
| Billboard Hot 100 | Hot R & B / Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks | Hot rap singles | Hot Dance Music / Maxi Singles Sales | ||
| 1990 | "Bonita Applebum" | - | # 56 | # 4 | - |
| 1990 | "I Left My Wallet In El Segundo" | - | # 9 | - | # 49 |
| 1991 | "Can I Kick It?" | - | #8th | - | - |
Others
The song I Left My Wallet In El Segundo is mentioned in the film Ladykillers by Ethan and Joel Coen , which is a remake of the film of the same name from 1955 .
literature
- Shawn Taylor: 33 1/3 - People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm . Continuum, 2007. ISBN 978-08264-1923-1
Web links
- Overview of reviews, ratings and leaderboards regarding Peoples Instinctive Travels (English)
- Review on Allmusic (English)
- Review in Rolling Stone (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.rocklist.net/source.htm
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↑ Album review in the All Music Guide
“[...] while" Ham 'n' Eggs "may be the oddest topic for a rap track ever heard up to that point (" I don't eat no ham and eggs, cuz they're high in cholesterol ") . ”
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↑ song review in the All Music Guide
"This 1990 track proved that to make a great rap song you didn't need putdowns or the sound of bullets flying."
- ↑ [1] itsrap
- ↑ [2] Who sampled
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↑ Album review in Rolling Stone
“But the shaggy-dog stories [...] get tedious fast. At least until it finally kicks in midway through side 2, this is one of the least danceable rap albums ever - there's no forward motion. Sound effects or no, the backing tracks frequently add up to the sort of funkified quiet-storm pseudo-jazz you might expect young Afrocentric upwardly mobiles to indulge in when they crack open that bottle of Ameretto and cuddle up in front of the gas fireplace [ ...] ”
- ↑ http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=A+Tribe+Called+Quest >