The wrinkle in this retelling is that Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest is a phenomenal documentary. Making a "love letter" to his all-time favorite musicians, Rapaport devotes the film's first half to deftly curated archival material, golden-age hip-hop perspectives from the likes of DJ Red Alert and Monie Love, and testimony from an impressive constellation of Tribe's peers and pupils--from the Beastie Boys to Pharrell Williams to Questlove--on behalf of "the Miles Davis of hip-hop," as the Roots' Black Thought remembers the band's initial influence. (Black Thought also hilariously calls ATCQ's early kente-cloth and dashiki wardrobe "some real questionable-type shit.")
The fawning is more deserved celebration than drooling hagiography. Then
comes the film's second half, which veers into cinema vérité, focusing
on the disintegrated ties between boyhood friends Tip, who has evolved
into dapper VH1 royalty, and his 20-year collaborator, Phife Dawg, a
squeaky-voiced sports nut who's grown to resent how Tip's calculated
swagger shrinks him into a sidekick.
Pitbull-stubborn and type-one diabetic, Phife becomes the movie's
wounded dark horse, enduring a desperately needed kidney transplant,
calling his boyhood buddy a "control freak," and venting about their
"love/hate relationship."
At one point during a 2008 Rock the Bells
reunion tour, Phife gives Tip the silent treatment so resolutely that an
awkward shouting match ensues, with Ali and Tribe's spiritual backbone
Jarobi White left ducking the crossfire. Despite the passive-aggressive bickering, Beats, Rhymes & Life is
not, thankfully, hip-hop's Some Kind of Monster.
And instead of editing his subjects into pre-ordained music biz roles,
Rapaport uses his access to present the members as full dynamic
characters, both letting a subway-stairs climbing scene linger long
enough to catch Tip politely let an older lady walk in front of him
while also portraying the rapper as a perfectionist headcase--as former
Jive Records exec Barry Weiss puts it, "I love Q-Tip, but he's a fucking
nut."
It's easy to see how a control-freak perfectionist would mistake
such character assessment for assassination. It's not, and even a fanboy
poseur like Michael Rapaport knows that.
--Camille Dodero