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

August, 12, 2011 , by Isaac Weeks

Watching the first forty or so minutes of Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, I couldn't help but wonder how this managed to get a theatrical release, as first-time director Michael Rapaport fails to deliver anything you couldn't find in your garden-variety "Behind the Music" special. Thankfully, it gets much better after the first half. After we learn how the band members all met and who ate lunch with each other in middle school, we finally get down to the business at hand. Rapaport was allowed to follow the group on their 2008 tour, one that served to finance the hospital visits of group member Phife Dawg, who has battled diabetes since 1990.

The group members themselves are the glue that holds this film together. While Q-Tip seems more than happy to tell the camera all about Tribe's place in music history and his place at the forefront of hip hop in the 90s, those around him make it clear that he was only an inch away from being as megalomaniacal as Axl Rose. In several instances, albums had to be forcibly taken away from him in order to get released. Phife doesn't battle for attention so much as respect, saying at one point that the group had become "Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest, like Diana Ross and the Supremes... I'm Florence Ballard!" Stuck in the middle is Ali Shaheed Muhammad, standing in the back, spinning the beats. He never has a disparaging word to say about anyone during the film. In one scene, however, after a fight between Q and Phife in which Q tells the camera he is being disrespected by a man he is only trying to help, Ali can't stop himself from rolling his eyes at the sanctimonious words pouring out of Q's mouth. You get the distinct feeling that Ali has been here many times before, and you can't help feeling a little sorry for him.

If Rapaport deserves any credit, perhaps it's for crafting hip hop's version of Metallica: Some Kind of Monster. Whereas that 2004 documentary showed the metal giants teetering on the edge of ruin after years of squabbling, at least they had produced 7 studio albums and a handful of live discs by that point. By all accounts, Tribe's chemistry was dead by their fourth album.

A good documentary filmmaker can take what would seem like the most boring subject in the world and produce a captivating 90-minute piece out of it. Michael Rapaport isn't there yet. If you are a fan of A Tribe Called Quest, come for the music; otherwise, just wait for it to pop up in a few weeks on VH1 Classics.

Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest opens today at the Chelsea, Colony & Galaxy.