Bleep

Just over a year after their debut album, A Tribe Called Quest had already landed one of the most important hip hop records of all time with The Low End Theory. Built off a minimal selection of jazz-sourced sounds and rhythms, the album cements the unshakeable synergy between Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who tear up the music industry and the competition while playing it cool the whole way through. ‘Excursions’ opens with a musing on the cyclical history of hip hop with acoustic bass plucks and saxophone sighs, before delving into crisp beats and smooth flows to back up the stellar rhymes.