A legend himself, Scarface is one who doesn’t need to prove that he is a rap aficionado. However, when asked to discuss his favorite album, A Tribe Called Quest’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, the vet turns full fanboy over the iconic group.
“The pieces to that puzzle were so artistic, so different, so damn, listen to Q-Tip’s voice. Listen to Phife. Listen to that, listen to Ali,” he says on an episode of Best Albums. “It was dope. The beats were dope. The rhymes were abstract, but they were dope. It brought a whole other feel in my opinion to the game. That was very inspirational to me. There’s a few albums that really make me say, ‘Damn.'”
For many, their first introduction to A Tribe Called Quest was the single, “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo,” which gave Scarface a lesson in geography.
“I think the coldest part of that was I didn’t know what the fuck El Segundo was until I came to Los Angeles. That’s when it really dawned on me, holy shit,” he reflects.
As host Soren Baker goes down the tracklist of A Tribe Called Quest’s debut project, Scarface hums the tune of “Ham ‘N’ Eggs,” naming that his favorite song. He says the beat, crafted by Tribe’s members on their own, is what really got him.
But every song has a special place in the Geto Boys rapper’s heart. He gets visibly excited as he grins and bounces up and down while marveling at the masterpiece that is People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.
“I forgot how dope that fucking album was,” he exclaims. “I’m getting fucking goosebumps, man. Tears. That was a dope-ass motherfucking album, dog.”
Although people probably wouldn’t group Scarface and A Tribe Called Quest in the same sub-genre, the Houston icon fully acknowledges the impact that Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White had on him.
“I can’t say that it was an influence, but I can say that it was an inspiration to be different, to not be scared to just make songs about whatever you wanted to make songs about,” he beams.
In the landscape of 1990s hip-hop, there are several monumental albums that have made their impact on the history of the genre. But for Scarface, nothing comes close to People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.
“It’s an album that I regard, it’s up there way high because it kind of carved out who I am and who I was back then,” he shares. “It wasn’t nothing else like it. There was nothing out like that at that time. I think that it being so different made it so dope. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the Jungle Brothers and De La Souls, I was big fans of that shit too. … When you go and you start digging into A Tribe Called Quest catalog, just the uniqueness of that shit, bruh, it was like damn, this is something. It was very inspirational man, back then. Then when they dropped the new shit, that shit man, that’s upper-class, that’s the upper echelon of hip-hop.”