Album Review: A Tribe Called Quest - People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm (25th anniversary reissue)

At what point does something become ‘a classic?’

Is it almost instantly, in some cases? Or how much time has to pass before something is looked back upon as seminal or influential?

25 years is kind of a long time. I was seven year old in 1990, the same year that A Tribe Called Quest’s debut album, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm was released. And much like its follow up, The Low End Theory, this Tribe album is looked upon fondly, often though by many to be a classic.

I’m not arguing the fact—however, Tribe was not a large part of the hip-hop landscape of my youth—I’m just curious on what makes this album one worth revisiting, or in this case, reissuing and remastering, 25 years down the line.

For starters, an album produced in 1990 can obviously benefit from being remastered in 2015—and by ‘remaster,’ I kind of just mean it makes everything louder. I mean, I’m sure there’s more work that goes into it than just that, but comparing what I downloaded last Friday morning with the previews of the original People’s in the iTunes store, the difference is mostly in the volume of the material.

But that’s the case with a number of reissues, right? They just seem a little louder than their counterpart, and no matter how hard you try to hone your ears, sometimes it doesn’t really seem like there’s a discernable difference in other areas.

1990 was truly a different time for hip-hop. In the shadow of N.W.A. but before the G-Funk era, People’s is a distinctly “fun” album—one that doesn’t take itself very seriously, i.e. “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo,” one of Tribe’s most well known songs that winds up being about exactly what the title leads you to believe it would be about. My wife actually heard this song for the first time recently and was a little perplexed by just how straightforward the humor is—“This guy is just rapping about the lunch he ate,” she said as the song played while I made dinner.

“Hip hop in 1990 was different,” was the only way I could respond.

Production wise, People’s is, for better and for worse, a product of its time. It’s one of the elements of the album that makes it seem a little antiquated and nostalgic by today’s standards, even though it could be viewed as innovative and refreshing by the standards of yesterday. Beat wise, there’s a lot of jazz, funk, and soul points of reference—something that has aged surprisingly well; however, it’s the execution of which that sometimes leaves me a little perplexed.

There are a lot of things that happen on People’s—meaning there are a lot of little segue tracks sandwiched in between songs, and those can be rather jarring when they come up. There is also a penchant to display all the deconstructed parts of a beat prior to the song actually beginning—case in point, the opening to “Footprints,” which uses its “Sir Duke” sample as an introduction before later (and awkwardly) forcing it back into the song. The same happens later in the group’s well-known “Bonita Applebum,” giving some of the songs a weird cut and paste collage kind of feeling now, 25 years later.

Like all reissues, People’s also contains three bonus tracks—but rather than including b-sides or outtakes, there are three contemporary remixes assembled by Pharrell Williams, Cee-Lo Green, and J. Cole (of all people) tacked on at the end. Hard to believe, but these additions do nothing to enhance the quality of the album.

As confounding and disorganized as it comes off as sometimes, People’s Instinctive Travels is the sound of a group just trying to figure itself out—its growth would come within the next year on the seminal Low End Theory, then later with Midnight Marauders. It’s still a fun, light hearted, smooth and laid back youthful album, and for as dated as it may appear, it still sounds better, and plays better, than 90% of today’s hip-hop landscape, which speaks volumes of both today’s hip-hop landscape as well as just how ahead of its time A Tribe Called Quest were right from the beginning.

People's Instinctive Travels is available now via Legacy.