Cover Classics takes a closer look at all-cover albums of the past, their genesis, and their legacy.
Not many people have covered A Tribe Called Quest. That’s not entirely surprising. You see that a lot in hip-hop—a genre where the coin of the realm is the remixes and sample more than the cover—and especially so in lyrically and musically dense acts like Tribe, without big crossover hits and giant pop hooks. The Tribe entries in the various cover-song database look pretty barren.
But the few artists that do cover Tribe go deep. There have been two full-length Tribe tribute albums, and both are excellent. True to the sampling spirit of the original group, they take the source material as fodder to build on, veering far afield from the originals in some cases. Continue reading »
