This one — “Electric Relaxation by A Tribe Called Quest — goes out to all the Lupe Fiascos of the world who somehow never heard it. Just trying to do my part, you know.
Lupe Fiasco flubbed Phife’s verse on “Electric Relaxation” during the VH1 Hip Hop Honors tribute to A Tribe Called Quest. It was kind of a surprise, because he messed up, among other things, “I like ‘em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican or Haitian,” which is kind of like, the line everyone knows. Whatever, it happens. I didn’t dwell on it.
Little did I know that since then, Lupe, 25, has been on a rampage of disrespect the hip hop sites have dubbed FiascoGate. Apparently, he has never listened to Tribe, who he says were before his time, never owned Midnight Maurauders, and had never heard “Electric Relaxation” prior to his performance. Interestingly, Lupe and I are around the same age, and I have been unable to go through life without being exposed, on multiple levels, to A Tribe Called Quest and their various works. And hip hop is not my chosen profession.
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It’s quite a rarity to have so many hip hop luminaries in one room, or one (Hammerstein) ballroom, as it was. But VH1 managed to cram as much talent as possible into their Hip Hop Honors show, which taped last night but airs Monday at 10 pm. Yes, there was a lot of talent there, but I don’t count Tracy Morgan, who hosted the awards and couldn’t quite get that teleprompter thing down. Could his SCRAM have been going off right about that time? No worries, I’m sure they’ll have that all cleaned up by Monday.
I had the pleasure of spending the evening in the press room, where the honorees and presenters came back to chat. In fact, so many VIPs were in attendance, I decided to write up my experiences in a handy superlative format. Check out the Best and Worst, plus lots and lots of pictures, after the jump.
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I’ve been thinking about Q-Tip lately, since I’ve seen him looking very well dressed and debonair in a number of recent paparazzi pictures. He looks quite different from the scruffy guy begging Bonita Applebum to put him on in this video, but that’s what the passage 17 years will do to you. I can’t imagine any Tribe Called Quest fan (or any hip hop fan of a certain age, for that matter) who won’t get nostalgic for the good ol’ days when they watch this (or any old Tribe song, for that matter) and think about what’s in rotation on BET and MTV today.
