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A Tribe Called Quest was welcomed into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday with an all-star tribute performance full of friends and fellow Hip-Hop legends, including Busta Rhymes, De La Soul, Queen Latifah, Common, and The Roots.
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Backed by The Roots, Queen Latifah started off the set rapping the group’s iconic “Can I Kick It?” with The Roots’ Black Thought and De La Soul’s Posdnous quickly jumping into “Check the Rhime.”Then, Common joined them for “Bonita Applebum,” followed by Busta Rhymes jumping in, first with a “Scenario” remix, before transitioning into the original version from A Tribe Called Quest’s 1991 album, The Low End Theory.
Ahead of the performance, comedian Dave Chappelle took the stage to induct ATCQ, remarking that “music was never the same” after Tribe released The Low End Theory. “Tribe has always been about togetherness. On their way up during their ascension, they helped form or found what Hip-Hop calls the Native Tongues, which included De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers and Queen Latifah and Monie Love and Black Sheep,” Chappelle expressed. “And all these bands, in their own way, changed our music and our culture really forever.” Noting, “I know this is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but this movement in Hip-Hop was the birth of so many great artists, and it started with these men sitting at this table.”
Chappelle also emotionally recalled attending a memorial for Phife Dawg at Q-Tip’s house, where his closest friends listened to old songs and movies, and also thanked the group for inviting him to host Saturday Night Live on the episode they served as musical guest in 2016. “It brought me back to television after 12 years in the cold,” Chappelle expressed.
To accept the honor, ATCQ members Q-Tip and Jarobi White were joined onstage by the parents of Phife Dawg, who passed away in 2016, as well as the sister of Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who was unable to attend the ceremony.
After coming together as a group in the '80s and recording a couple of demos as teenagers, A Tribe Called Quest released their groundbreaking debut album People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm in 1990. The album quickly established them as imaginative Hip-Hop
innovators, which they continued to build upon with 1991’s The Low End Theory, 1993’s Midnight Marauders, 1996’s Beats, Rhymes and Life, and The Love Movement in 1998, all now bonafide classics.
The group went their separate ways in 1998, reuniting a few times in the 2000s. With the final album, We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, which included features from Jack White, Kendrick Lamar, Elton John, Busta Rhymes, and more, arriving in 2016, following Phife Dawg’s death.
Other artists who inducted during Saturday night’s ceremony included Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Matthews Band, Cher, Mary J. Blige, Peter Frampton, Foreigner, Kool & The Gang, Jimmy Buffett, MC5, and Dionne Warwick.
Watch A Tribe Called Quest get inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame below. Plus, view the entire ceremony, now available to stream on Hulu.