Album Review: Q-Tip's The Renaissance

Album Review: Q-Tip's The Renaissance

Q-TIP: The Renaissance - the Sunday Times review
by Dan Cairns of UKTimes

It’s not The Low End Theory, but to measure Q-Tip’s new solo album against A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 masterpiece (as some are) seems unfair. Its gestation has been, even by his standards, a long one, but the wait proves worth it. Listen to that piano, working discordantly to subvert Johnny Is Dead’s verses; to the Obama-sampling Shaka; to the simultaneously fly and catatonic grooves of Gettin’ Up; to the almost sectionably odd Norah Jones duet, Life Is Better; to the Midnight Marauders- recalling Won’t Trade You. One-third of one of hip-hop’s most innovative acts, Tip stays true to TCQ’s jazz-rap-fusing and socially conscious ethos, imagining love across the US-Iraq divide on the spare funk of We Fight/Love, and coercing D’Angelo to make vocal magic on I Believe. Wonderful stuff.

MY OWN REVIEW TO COME...

THE BELOW EVENT WAS HELD AT COMMONWEALTH DC, WHICH IS 4 BLOCKS FROM WHERE I LIVE AND A FABULOUS PHARREL RUN CLOTHING BOUTIQUE IN DC. IT WAS A PRE-RELEASE LISTENING PARTY, IN 3 PARTS. FOLLOWING IT ARE SOME OF MY FAVORITE TRACKS FROM THE ALBUM.