NPR Reviews Hanif Abdurraqib's Go Ahead in the Rain

Lily Meyer of NPR takes a deep dive into poet Hanif Abdurraqib's latest book of prose, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, which, in Meyer's words, is "at once an extended critical essay, a hip-hop history, and a series of love letters to A Tribe Called Quest, and particularly to the group's two star MCs, Q-Tip and Phife Dawg." From there:

In his two previous books, The Crown Ain't Worth Much and They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Abdurraqib demonstrated his expertise at compressing massive emotions into minimal space. Here, he takes that skill up yet another notch. He has a seemingly limitless capacity to share what moves him, which means that to read Go Ahead in the Rain, you don't need to be a Tribe Called Quest fan: Abdurraqib will make you one. His love for the group is infectious, even when it breaks his heart.

The story of A Tribe Called Quest is, from a certain vantage, heartbreaking. From most, it's mythic. Childhood friends Q-Tip and Phife Dawg began rapping as high schoolers in Queens, using music "as a bridge to each other." By the time they were 25, they had become one of hip-hop's greatest groups. They rooted their sound in jazz like few rappers before them, creating a sound that both honored and transformed the past. They were crucial members of the Afrocentric hip-hop collective Native Tongues, and Q-Tip and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad became two-thirds of The Ummah, a production collective that made songs for Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, and many more. Meanwhile, their own albums made them undisputed stars.

But Q-Tip overshadowed Phife Dawg, and tensions between the two rose until 1999, when A Tribe Called Quest released their fifth album and then broke up. When the group reunited in 2016, Phife Dawg was suffering from the diabetes that had long plagued him — on Midnight Marauders, Tribe's third album, he rapped, "When's the last time you heard a funky diabetic?" — and before A Tribe Called Quest's final album came out, Phife was dead.

Read more at NPR.