Q-Tip on new "Tribe" film / "Tell y'all own stories... we griots"

[electricladylike]

Yup. In "Beaten Rhymes and Strife: The Instinctive Travels of A Tribe Called Colonized" Jared Ball writes:
"Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest is a film for its times capturing the low end of a theory that has been so ravaged by marauders at midnight that its rhymes are beaten and stripped of their content like, as you’ve no doubt guessed, a wallet left in El Segundo..."
‎"For instance, the film only quickly passes by the political and cultural shifts of the late 1980s into the 90s never fully developing that context out of which A Tribe emerged. The group members are never shown on camera responding in-depth to those shifts and their involvement in them. Through direction their encouraged responses to the dashikis they once wore were dismissively described as the off-brand move of nerds. Maybe, but in a rare Dutch television documentary on the group from the 1990s currently posted to the website of DJ Premier these very same men discuss that time as one of revolutionary political and cultural shifts building off of movements in the streets and universities to reclaim an African past and to build a more radical future..."
"Or how is it that you make a documentary about the group who to this day has one of the most memorable and referenced anti-industry lines in rap music history and they are not asked to discuss, nor is any investigation made into, “industry rule number 4080, record company people are shady”? In fact, quite the opposite. Record exec Barry Weiss is so warmly involved in the film that he is even give free run to haphazardly opine on the personality flaws of Tribe front man Q-Tip. No. Instead it is far sexier and marketable to Sony’s audience to focus the film on the internal beef between group mates and to waste other opportunities to interview legends like De La Soul by having them only to quickly comment on the demise of their fellow Native Tongues..."

And drum roll...
Firma Onrust TV special with Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest. Includes interviews and live footage from the Effenaar, Eindhoven show on 13-3-1990.. The end is most potent. Ironically, the Dutch produced this. Still though, there is something much more "documentary" about it. (special thanx to my Sistren Jocelyn for sharing on facebook).