Way Back: The Renaissance (2008)
“It’s up to me to bring back the hope
And put feeling in the music that you can quote”
-Q-Tip – “Johnny Is Dead”
On November 4th, 2008, Kamaal Fareed, better known as Q-Tip, released his second solo album, The Renaissance. The project came as something of a surprise because it’s predecessor, Amplified, was in rotation roughly nine years prior. It was a hiatus long enough for the genre to experience seismic changes. The southern bops that felt so niche during Tip’s solo debut in 1999 became the standard in commercial rap. Similarly, the New York boom bap sound that Q-Tip helped to popularize with A Tribe Called Quest was growing more and more scarce by the Renaissance’s release in 2008.
It was never Fareed’s intention to wait so long between albums, but the industry wasn’t completely ready for the brand of rap that he was making after his departure from Tribe. Amplified was a commercial success, but Tip spent parts of the next nine years getting three different albums shelved or rejected by Arista and Universal Motown. Finally, Motown approved the release of The Renaissance, a questionable title considering what the rap pioneer had been through. Fareed explained his choice for the title in an interview:
“The whole hip-hop community for the past couple of years has been having a conversation about the actual music. Dudes not putting as much creativity into things, dudes doing formulaic records, I feel like there’s been a Renaissance, a reawakening of the creative spirit, through artists like Wale or Common, Kanye, Charles Hamilton. I feel like these artists have been representin’. I wanted to name it Renaissance because I feel like the change is right here.”
Q-Tip produced all but two tracks on the album, with both of those beats coming from the late J Dilla. He called in multiple musicians to help craft the fifteen tracks. That list included Amanda Diva, Norah Jones, and D’Angelo on background vocals. Robert Glasper and Marc Cary chipped in on keyboard, while Raphael Saadiq played some bass and sang a hook. The album has an upbeat vibe that doesn’t come off cheesy due to all the live instrumentation. Sure, this is boom bap, but the pace of the music can certainly elicit some dancing. It feels like what you might hear at a good live show, backed by a few smooth samples and lead by Tip’s killer rhymes.
Perhaps his most impressive bars come on the second track “Won’t Trade”. Here he speaks about the art of rap as a sport, and cleverly stretches that allegory over two verses. Q understands that he’s aging and not quite the flavor of the month, but he uses the Ruby Andrews sample to reiterate that he can’t be “traded”:
“The Division One leader, in the rebound with numerous shorties
Off the post, goin' coast to coast, she on the hardwood
Sub him out the game, she sayin', "Nah, he good"”
Other standouts include “You”, where he takes on the role of the scorned lover. In “We Fight/We Love” he speaks to the plight of the soldier. “Renaissance Rap” is hidden on the back end of the Michael Jackson-sampled “Move”, and features some of his best lines over a previously unused Dilla track. “Life Is Better” has the Norah Jones feature and a tribute to some of rap’s most impactful acts.
Celebrate The Renaissance today to honor one of rap’s legends. To everyone that says rappers can’t age gracefully within the genre, here is proof of Q-Tip doing exactly that. He respected the past and tried a new sound without compromising his lyrical integrity, and that’s something we don’t see often anymore.
