Q-Tip: The Renaissance's Cover

I finally picked up Q-Tip’s second solo album, The Renaissance. I know, I know! It was released on November 4, but I only got around to buying it yesterday. I wasn't expecting much, because I wasn't a big fan of his first album. So? I was surprisingly impressed.

The first track, “Johnny Is Dead” knocked my socks off. I was hooked right away and had great expectaions for the rest of the album. I wasn't disappointed. The album was produced by late hip-hop producer J-Dilla and features appearances by D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq, Norah Jones and Amanda Diva. The samples are perfect and work well with Q-Tip’s rhyming style. I am glad Q-Tip decided to let a few years pass before he released his second solo album. It was worth the wait.

Check out this interview, and the video single "Move" below:

OKP: The Renaissance is definitely more than just the title of your new album; I’ve heard you talk about a movement, a rebirth, in hip-hop. In European history, the Renaissance was a rebirth after the Black Death—a hundred million had just people died. Is the renaissance you’re hoping to usher in the result of hip-hop being dead?

Q-TIP: It’s exactly like you said; when you look at history, ‘the Renaissance’ is French for rebirth, and I feel like we went through a definite death period. I guess I said it first, a while ago—like ’98: “hip-hop is dead.” Then Andre 3000 said it, then Nas said it and named his album after it, and a lot of that conversation was being had. There was a lot of debate going back and forth, whether it [was] practitioners of the craft, or people who critiqued it, or follow it. Then at the same time—the thing that was running concurrent with this supposed, for lack of a better term, ‘death’ of hip-hop—was kind of the death of an American idea through the Bush Administration: the unilateral decision to go to war; the deterioration of the economy, which we are feeling now; prices ballooning – gas prices; people not being able to keep their homes. All of these things were just tell tale signs of, you know – excretion, or death, or a casting out, or anything like that that denotes getting rid of, or dying, or coming to an end.

When things come to an end there are new beginnings, and… while that was happening in the music, I feel like great things happened. I feel like Lupe put out some good music. The Roots put out two amazing albums that didn’t really see the light of day. Kanye was probably the only beacon for like a well-rounded movement, you know what I mean? You have people like Santogold coming up. You have people like The Cool Kids, The Knux, and Charles Hamilton, Cons. You just have a real – underground, and I’m familiar with that because I’ve seen that happen before. So, I kind of felt like: wow, this is happening again. So it just felt like it was the correct title to call things, because people were just tired of being oversaturated with a bunch of commercialized stuff and commercialized expression. People wanted to have real expression to go along with their day. People may have ended their day, had a hard day, and they want to hear something that makes ‘em feel good and inspires them. That’s what music is for. So, there is going to be a renaissance—whether it be that I’m a part of it or not—it’s just fact.

OKP: Let me ask you, a lot of your musical descendants—a lot of the people you just mentioned—get labeled with this ridiculous “conscious hip-hop” tag, and a lot of them have tried to fight that label; I think Kweli’s new album is even called Prisoner of Consciousness. Did you experience that back in the Tribe days? And do you feel that same sort of frustration now with The Renaissance coming out?

Q-TIP: Well, yeah, I just think that that’s a bad—I mean people make it that smart people are a bad thing. If you read, and if you have a conversation with somebody that lasts for a while and you’re able to not have ADD and stay on the topic and expound on things, you’re viewed as too smart, and you’re frowned upon, or you’re looked at as a nerd or whatever, or you’re trying to be an elitist. And that’s not the case. I don’t think that that’s a fair rub. You shouldn’t be ostracized because of intelligence, but at the same time, if you’re intelligent you shouldn’t ostracize others with it. You know what I mean?

OKP: Yeah, definitely.

Q-TIP: …I think everyone just needs to be easy on that, and maybe let people live off of the merits of their work, and not by their ideologies or the way they express them.

OKP: Right. Alright, let me talk to you about the music on the new album. Following in the line of Kaamal the Abstract, and definitely your recent live shows, you’re taking advantage of more live instrumentation—but you’re still a legendary sampler—so what’s the production process like mixing the samples and the live instruments? How are you doing that these days?

Q-TIP: I still love sampling. I’m deep in it. I think it’s amazing when you’re able to capture things, and contort ‘em and stretch ‘em, and sew and nip, you know, just fuck with it. And with the musicians I just apply that same aesthetic to it. So if I’m playing something on keys: I’ll play it, and then I’ll sample it and I may chop it or slow it down—it’ll become something else—and I may re-play it. It’s just a constant muck up. And I think that the barometer in all of my processing is how it feels—if it feels good, it goes—but there’s no rules. The only thing that I find myself struggling with sometimes is like: ‘Oh, I want it to be in 440,’ [Note: “A440” is the 440 Hz tone regarded the standard reference for musical pitch.] but sometimes it doesn’t have to be in 440. 440 is like the—I’m sure you know—it’s like the, you know, the—

OKP: It’s like the standard—

Q-TIP: It’s the universal key; a universal register for harmonic – e-qual-it-y. [Laughing] So sometimes if you stretch out of tune or out of 440—to be in tune is 440 sometimes, to be out of tune is 441. With sampling and shit, we usually take shit out of tune, which gives it its aurora and gives it its vibe. So I always try to fight that, see how far I can stretch it within the 440, but then I try and take it out sometimes— I know I’m geeking out right now. That’s how I view it. Yeah, sampling is still a major part of my processing.

OKP: I want to get back to sampling, but talk to me about equipment real quick. On the over of the new album you have the MPC. And way back in ‘88 on “Black is Black,” you and Sha’ made that on his uncle’s 4-track tape recorder, right?

Q-TIP: Yeah.

OKP: So can you connect the dots for us? Like, just quickly run down, maybe album-by-album, what equipment you were using and how it evolved?

Q-TIP: Hmm. On the first album I was fucking with the SP-12, and then towards the end I started fucking with the 1200. Then on the second album I was fucking with the SP-1200 and the 950. Then by the third album I started fucking around with the MPC a little—I was still fucking with the [SP-1200] and the 950—but the MPC started getting involved. By the fourth album I started fucking with the MPC-3’—the Roger Linn—and then I just kept fucking with it. Now, I kind of fuck with – with everything. [Note: E-mu SP12 Drum Sampler (released in 1985); E-mu SP-1200 (1988); Akai S950 (1988); Akai MPC3000 (1994)]

OKP: Gotcha, thank you. So to get back to—

Q-TIP: Dilla, when I started working with Dilla, after the third, fourth album—all that shit—we was definitely on the ‘3000, hard.

OKP: Oh I bet, I bet. Even before him, was it always like that? Like maybe with the S950 – did Large Pro get you into that, or anything?

Q-TIP: Oh yeah definitely. Large Professor, he—You know what it was? I was fucking with the 950, when I met Paul, he was really fucking with the 950 too so I was like, wow. But what Large Professor did for me is, he showed me mad shit on the SP-1200 and I didn’t even know! He was like showing me crazy shit, because I was still on some quasi pause-tape shit, like my pause-tapes were just crazy, and that’s how I just used to get down, just pause-tape shit out. But yeah that 950, I was fucking with it—I seen it around when I was working on the first album and I just started fucking around with it—but then when I met Paul I realized he was doing it too.

Read the rest of the interview here.