Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest

I've certainly been interested to see Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest since I first heard of it, but I can't say I've been as anxious as a lot of heads seem to be. For one, I've always liked A Tribe Called Quest, but they've never been a personal favorite. Like, if you told me there was a collection of never before heard, vintage Tribe Called Quest tracks behind Door #1, and never before heard vintage Juice Crew tracks behind Door #2... you would have to remind me next week what the heck was behind Door #1 again. That's just where I'm coming from as a fan.

And the other thing is that: we've been hearing about this movie for ages, but every blog or article everywhere has been on the drama between the members. Either they're calling each other out in the press, or they're holding the film back or boycotting the screenings, or half of them are calling the other half out for holding the film back and boycotting the screenings. I love hip-hop music. Celebrity gossip, on the other hand, I'm not into. And it's not so much that I couldn't separate the hype from the actual film, so much as I was worried that the actual film would just be more of the hype: two hours of each member sniping at the others. Turns out that fear was somewhat justified.

It's not a good sign that the film starts out, even before the opening credits, with dramatic pull quotes of the members arguing about each other and the break-up, and then cutting to a frustrated Q-Tip talking about how they'd never perform together again. But then, once the credits roll, that was all but forgotten. For the next 45 minutes or so, we had nothing but a fresh retrospective of the career of Tribe, with in-depth interviews with members, managers and other artists. All their highlights are covered, their early lives, behind-the-scenes introspection so even the biggest Tribe fans will find themselves learning new insights into the group. We get into Phife's health problems and Jarobe's life outside the group when he "boated" after the first album. This is easily one of the best hip-hop documentaries I've seen, and I highly recommend it.

But then, yeah, the film gets too side-tracked by the drama. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the film shouldn't have covered the break-up or the animosity the members (mainly Tip and Phife) felt for each other at different times... If all of that was skipped over, I would've accused this film of white-washing and being just a shallow press piece. But the film just lingers on it, and we watch so much footage of them just arguing over absolutely nothing and calling each other out over and over. It just feels like the filmmakers thought, "this is where the money is" and included every ounce of footage they could squeeze out of the drama, whether it was worthy of inclusion or not.

And that's all the more frustrating because of what was left out. Only one of Tribe's managers is given one single sentence to bring up how J Dilla was brought into the production team for the final album, and fans were curious what Consequence was doing there. No one answers that question or addresses these topics, or how that changed the dynamics of the group. There's a super-short, maybe 30 second, clip referencing Tip's solo career (he mentions he was surprised to be getting 5 mics), and from watching this documentary you would never even know that Phife put out solo records. Tip's solo album that was unreleased for so long and was such a controversial mystery in hip-hop? Unmentioned. Ali's album on Penalty Records? Unmentioned ...though there is a single sentence where he mentions his group Lucy Pearl. But a single name-dropping sentence is hardly deep documentary filmmaking. And all the great hip-hop nerd stuff we'd love to see answered, like the many versions of "Scenario," with different MCs on them? Unmentioned.

It seems like the second half of this documentary was discarded in favor of celebrity gossip. And maybe commercially that was the right decision. It's certainly giving the film tons and tons of press and message board action. But artistically, it's a let down. Of course the break-up had to be in there. The war of personalities was, in some ways, the heart of the story. But when we get into a drawn-out segment of them arguing over how Phife nudged Tip while walking on-stage but it might've been too much like a push... I feel like the great documentary has been switched off, and somebody's changed the channel to a trashy reality TV show made for the E! channel instead.

At the end of the day, though, this is still the most substantive documentary on Tribe we'll ever get, and one of the best hip-hop documentaries the film world has produced so far. And I'm betting/hoping, when the DVD finally comes out, there'll be plenty of bonus footage that covers most of the subjects they trimmed away in order to make room for the drama; and then we'll really have a definitively rewarding Tribe documentary on our hands.