The arrival of a new Q-Tip album is remarkable for many reasons, not least the fact that the disc has actually been released. After his former group, A Tribe Called Quest, called it a day, we’ve seen only one solo LP, 1999’s Amplified, from the venerable MC. Since then, Tip’s drifted through several record labels and seen his ambitious, genre-defying follow-up, Kamaal the Abstract, shelved by Arista Records for fear it wouldn’t sell.
On the heels of Tribe’s reunion run at this summer’s Rock the Bells tour, the Abstract Poetic is officially, and commercially, back. To hear the Queens native tell it, he was just waiting for the right moment to strike—even if that timing smacks of shameless piggybacking on Obamarama. Not only did The Renaissance drop on November 4, but Q-Tip’s website features the slogan “Change Is Here.” The album’s closer, “Shaka,” was intended to open the album with a sample of a speech by Barack himself; the track was moved to the end once the label was unable to clear the sample.
Despite the album title, Q-Tip has changed little—which is good news. For the last four years, he’s been tweaking this collection, an outgrowth of another abandoned effort, Open. Like Kamaal, it incorporates live instrumentation, drawing more on jazz, funk and rock than hip-hop. But as the album art makes clear—the artist holds an Akai MPC60 sampler in front of his face—the charming lyricist is back to old-school basics.
It’s a reverse renaissance: The suave MC returns to his glory days as part of the Native Tongues posse, showcasing his nimble rhymes and clever phrasing. His voice is impressive (and remarkably Auto-Tune free), but he squeezes in a few guest turns from smooth heavyweights like Norah Jones (“Life Is Better ”), D’Angelo (“Believe”) and Raphael Saadiq (“We Fight/We Love”). Still, this is Q-Tip’s endeavor, entirely self-produced except for “Move,” a smooth cutup of the Jackson 5’s “Dancing Machine” by the late great J Dilla. Slippery grooves like the first single, “Gettin’ Up,” offer further proof that although Q-Tip’s comeback is a safe return to form, it’s entirely worth the wait.
Q-Tip plays the House of Blues Saturday 6.
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