In honor of the Five-Footer, which is what the late Phife called himself, here are five artists inspired by A Tribe Called Quest!
1. Kanye West
2. Pharrell
3. Andre 3000
4. The Roots’ Questlove
“Tribe was socially conscious without being too self-conscious about it… and the samples dug into the most amazing corners of ’70s music,” the drummer wrote in an open letter published on Billboard inNovember 2015. “They made your parents’ record collection relevant again… In 1990, I was a budding hip-hop artist, but hearing (People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm) made everything bloom.”
“They helped name me,” he continued in a reference to his stage name, which he changed from B.R.O. the R.? (pronounced Brother Question) to Questlove. “Now I name them for what they were, are and always will be: one of the brightest constellations in hip-hop’s sky.”
5. Pusha T
“(A Tribe Called Quest) opened up the colors of hip-hop to me,” the rapper told NPR Music back in October 2013. “I was very one-track minded, with hip-hop. Very. I’m G Rap, I’m Rakim, you know? I could only see it one way. Tribe just opened up the colors and let me know like, ‘Wait a minute, man. This is fresh.’ You know what I’m saying? It let me know that, like, I didn’t have to listen to it in just that capacity, just a street capacity. It was still fly. It was the first, like — man, I remember the Polo Hi Tech jackets. Like, come on, man. It was so many things to me. Tribe was so many things to me. And it really opened up, like, the horizons of hip-hop to me.”
Read more on these artists’ being influenced by A Tribe Called Quest from USA TODAY
