I was supposed to be at the Wu-Tang Clan reunion at Rock The Bells in Southern California a few months before. I was all of eighteen-years-old; having recently graduated high-school and purchased my first car, a Volkswagen Corrado. I was sitting outside my parent's house in my dark-green VW Corrado with my hands on the wheel, car keys in my lap. My parents had just forbid me from attending the concert and weren't looking like they were gonna relent even a little. I was (apparently) too young to drive that far of a distance on my own, according to my mother (and mom always calls the shots, at least in MY family). "But moooom!! (high-pitched, whiney teenager voice)...this show is going to be LEGENDARY. They mighty NEVER perform as a unit again!!!" My pleading was completely worthless - my parent's decision had already been made-up. "There will be other Wu-Tang Clan shows, Eric", my father dismissively said. Sometimes, parents truly just don't understand. ODB would be dead a few months later - dying of a tragic cocaine overdose on the same date of the next Rock The Bells concert festival AFTER that fateful Wu-Tang reunion. This time, A Tribe Called Quest was reuniting for their first West Coast appearance in six years, since The Love Movement released. And there was no fucking way I was missing it for the world.
I couldn't drive though, obviously. That shit didn't magically disappear in the four or so months since that infamous Wu-Tang Reunion-slash-final ODB show ever. That RTB founder Chad Whatever would transform that show into an eventual live-performance DVD; which just twisted the knife deeper into my side. So yeah - I guess I'm still not over that. BUT, back to my transportation woes - I ended up taking the hour-half plane ride down to Anaheim, where my friend was there to meet me. He was my ride-or-die, and we were both pretty huge Tribe fanatics. Borderline obsessed. Well, I can only personally vouch for myself and I was pretty deep into the ATCQ aesthetic, mythology and music. Especially the music. And the personalities. Q-Tip? GTFOH. He's like the rap game She's All That. Sure, he's nerdy AF. But let that nasally voice age like fine wine for a few spins on the turntable and you start to hear the poetry in motion. Mixed with those jazz samples; the horns, the saxophones, THOSE DRUMS - damn near unbeatable. Especially when you also add a little dash of Phife Diggy. You see, Phife gave Tribe the edge it needed. Even though homie was damn near the size of a 10-year-old boy, Phife backed it all up with confidence and swagger for days. But still, a little nerdy too. All these fools weren't making any America's Most Wanted episodes anytime soon (90's!!!). Or even America's Least Wanted (90's wordplay jokes!!!). SO ANYWAY....A Tribe Called Quest is basically amazing. And they haven't been performing much by 2004. Times were trife, to borrow another infamous QueensBridge rap group. Bitterness, resentments had festered for far too long. But apparently (i.e. a big bag of cash) the three-man group (sometimes four SHOUT-OUT TO JAROBI WHATS GOOD FAM I AIN'T FORGET YA) still had some gas in the proverbial tank to soldier-on for what-was-thought-but-eventually-future-proved-untrue the first, and last, ATCQ show ever. I mean, they were already sorta broken-up and Q-Tip was going through his art-and-jiggyness-blend-shit phase. But that was (thankfully) in the past and everybody in Tribe (even Jariobi, yo!) was ready to rock the mic in Anaheim; in a hot-ass parking lot with the Angels' stadium in the background.
Like I said before - I was a fresh-faced and newly-turned 18-year-old. Who had only just started digging deep into the crates of hip-hop culture and everything it contained. Which was, to say the least, a fuckload. Teenagers go through phases, and I was no different. Musically, it was 100% hip-hop. And let's just say that my The Northface backpack was strapped-on pretty damn tight at that point in my life. Lots of Pete Rock, Preemo, Dilla. Every Outkast album and B-side, ever. The first couple The Roots LP's. And I can't forget the Wu-Tang Clan, especially Ghostface Killah (raise your W's up!!). But A Tribe Called Quest was the guiding light of it all. And now I was going to be able to see them live, finally. I didn't think it'd ever be possible. Back then, I'd written a rap-show bucket list, and ATCQ was #1. To say the least, I was pretty juiced. But there was a litany of groups to get-through first - Rock The Bells was a festival. And they didn't slouch on the line-up, either. First-off, they had two stages. Remember (that means you, live-show-and-festival babies) - this was at a point in Rock The Bell's history when the founders and their organizers were still wrapping their heads around how to put-on a major rap-only music festival. Chad Whatever had just moved his Rock The Bells showcase from small clubs on the Subset Strip in downtown Los Angeles into a full-fledged, multi-stage, major attendance event. So there were some kinks. First-off - RTB hadn't yet made a deal to host their festivals at the NOS Events Center in San Bernardino which could fit enough drugged-out ravers and stoned backpack-rap heads into it's grounds to fill a county jail. So the 2004 ATCQ Reunion RTB was held in the Anaheim Angels Stadium parking lot. Which sounds great, in theory. But combine that asphalt with thousands of sweaty, drunk-and-drugged people, and San Bernardino's notorious weather with it's high temperature. It's a goddamn disaster in-the-making. But once we got inside the stadium (and past it's lethargic, ambivalent, I-dont-get-paid-enough-for-this-shit security personnel) - the rush of hearing familiar-but-faint boom-bap raps and running over to the stage erased ALL the bullshit.
Yes, it was hot. Extremely. But so was the music I was hearing in my eardrums, and there was a LOT of it. Seriously. We realized that the group would have to make some tough choices. All those amazing beat & rhymes couldn't possibly be contained to a single stage. Which meant that different rappers would be performing their sets at the same time, on two different stages. This meant sacrifices would need to made. But for the most part, my fellow breakbeat fiends and myself managed to experience watching our favorite musical artists perform live. These included Cypress Hill and their inflatable buddha, ganja smoke clouds, and green stage lighting. Supernatural proved for the thousandth time why he's the best pure freestyle-rapper in the world - he randomly included various objects and words thrown on-stage during his performance that's always a 100% crowd-pleaser. And this particular crowd needed pleasing now, more than ever. That's because moments earlier on that fateful date in November, 2004 - literally during the Rock The Bells festival - it was announced that ODB had tragically passed-way. Yes, hip-hop's resident-court-jester would make his audience laugh never again. The Wu-Tang is probably second to only ATCQ in terms of their importance and impact on underground rap music and culture. With that being said, the rest of the day was full of various ODB tributes, memorials, BIC lighter-arisings, and the like. Whatever anyone could do to alleviate the grieving over ODB's death - there was still a large portion of the RTB festival left and the show must go on; in this case, quite literally. And so it did. My friends and I spent the rest of the day smoking blunts, drinking tall cans, and watching all the ODB tributes and rhyme showcases with much fervor. As if the Tribe reunion wasn't enough, Ms. Lauryn Hill herself made a special appearance. As I said before, some sacrifices would have to be made. Unfortunately, in my young musical inexperience; I chose to leave Jaylib's set after only ten minutes or so and then my friends and I rushed over to the main stage to watch Mr. Pimp His Ride with the mouthful-of-gravel giggles himself, Xzibit (he was reuniting with Tha Alkaholiks, yo! THE LIKS COME ON FAM!). I can come-up with a thousand excuses, but nothing will ever make-up for that mistake of watching half of X-to-the-Z over Jaylib. Because one-half of Jaylib was Top 5 DOA hip-hop producers, ever. His name was J.Dilla. In present-day 2016, Dilla's a rap GOD. But in 2004, the only people who recognized Dilla's unique abilities were his fellow musicians. I was familiar with the name, but the fact that J.Dilla was responsible for most-all my favorite rap songs ever, well, I hadn't connected the dots yet. Nor had the rest of my fellow caucasian head-nodders. But I HAD realized the importance of ATCQ on my life and musical tastes. So what happened after that ill-fated Jaylib/Xzibit+Liks performance was unlike any I'd experienced yet in my young life. Q-Tip, Phife, Ali Shaheed Muhammaed...AND EVEN JAROBI FTW. They were all there. The set started-off kinda slow - lots of discussion about their various interactions with ODB over the year, etc. I started to cringe. Was this "it"? Did I drive all the way down to SoCal from Oakland, for THIS? My teeth started to grind, and not from copious amounts of uppers. But when you fall-in-love with a musical artist/group, there's obviously some expectations. Some of these, the artists can't even begin to fulfill. I'd been building-up the hype for watching a live ATCQ performance for what seemed like decades. So it's safe to say I was starting to get antsy and worried - and it wasn't the shit-ton of blunts I'd been taking puffs on all damn day already. But then it happened. Tip was saying some friendly audience call-and-response banter to the crowd, and then he mentioned that Ali Shaheed Muhammed was queuing up 'Check The Rime'. Those familiar horns went-off just as Tip had timed his jump-into-the-air-and-swing-arms-up-and-down. The crowd went crazy - that shit was amazing. Tribe then proceeded to knock every single of their classics out with the energy of men possessed. And I was right there to experience it all. It was one of those pivotal moments in a person's life that makes for perfect grandchildren storytelling material. I was 18, with the world 100% in front of me. Now it's 2016, and twelve years have passed since that A Tribe Called Quest show in Anaheim. I've attempted to find actual video footage of the event and, quite shockingly, none exists. Anywhere. There's multiple pictures included here, but it seems that archival footage - even a damn RTB 2004 ATCQ Reunion flyer - has been lost to the sands of time. Fortunately, my mind's eye remembers. And just like A Tribe Called Quest's legacy and influence, that shit's forever.
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