So why is A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
Midnight Marauders is the exquisite fusion of jazz and hip-hop.
It’s also the potion that unlocks a world of memories from my era in Manhattan in the mid-‘90s.
For both of those reasons, A Tribe Called Quest’s chilled down masterpiece earns its place as #13 of the best 1,000 albums ever.
I’ve mused in other pieces like Digable Planets’ Reachin’ (#353 of best 1,000 albums ever) or Jurassic 5’s Quality Control (#80) about how I’ve often wished that the subgenre of jazzy hip-hop had flourished more than it did, and Midnight Marauders is the one I always think of first here.
Tribe, De La Soul, and Jungle Brothers would later get loosely grouped under the “Native Tongues” umbrella, a jazz-soaked pocket of hip-hop that felt like possibility and optimism and community. Midnight Marauders sits right at the moment when that sound reached its most glowing form, before hip-hop music became more splintered, harsher, and darker in attitude and sound.
And that peak moment mirrors how New York City felt to me in the ‘90s: glowing, electric, overflowing with possibility.
I have to start with “Clap Your Hands.”
By the time we get the simple and simply perfect keyboard tones, the peak mood has locked in.
Sublime. Ethereal. Perfection.
There’s an energy to the City of New York that is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. It’s invisible yet palpable. It’s a place where things happen. Life happens, people happen, moves and shakes and breaks and heartaches, all of it happening all at once and all the time.
Midnight Marauders is a distillation of that feeling.
That’s the ATCQ magic: conjuring glowing jazz in a hip-hop cauldron reimagined as downtown electricity – casting groove vibes across New York like a kinetic, in-your-bones spell.
I realized that those tones are almost like a hypnosis trigger for me, but a lucid one – if that’s even a thing. What I mean is that I’m transported back to my halcyon and occasionally hell-raising days traipsing around downtown Manhattan.
Part of NYC’s magic is the sheer volume of people you encounter in everyday life. That alone makes it different than every city in the U.S. Manhattan then goes next level by way of the strivers, the eccentrics, the people who have “lived life” in string theory-level permutations that boggle the mind.
The Nigerian cab driver. The seventy-year-old aspiring playwright. The dudes going hard at it in Timberlands and camouflage pants at the West 4th Street courts. The kid trying to hustle me at Grand Central.
Stumbling into a tiny West Village venue where your brain gets slammed with the best funked-out hip-hop you’ve heard in your life.
All of that humanity had a rhythm, a pulse, a vibe – and Tribe taps into all of it.
And once Midnight Marauders has you under that spell, the whole album unfolds like a guided tour.
Now, a quick moment to talk about this album with relation to The Low End Theory (#551), which many critics and fans herald as ATCQ’s best album. Both are great, but for me Midnight Marauders has a richer and warmer tone that elevates it to the ultimate lower Manhattan vibes soundtrack that I’m gushing about here.
Much of this is due to Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s production: sultry, midnight basslines, crisp snares that never overpower, and jazz samples woven together with master craftsman precision. Midnight Marauders feels tighter, more fluid, and beautifully languid versus The Low End Theory, like the group had perfected the balance between head-nod snap and late-night atmosphere.
If “Clap Your Hands” is the point at which the hypnotist snaps their fingers and all of a sudden the subject is “under,” the album’s first eight tracks build up to that point.
“Steve Biko (Stir It Up)” immerses you in the delightful gentle-yet-aggressive mode that Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, and crew throw down, with “Award Tour” (featuring Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul fame) laying down a jazzed-up hip-hop classic.
By the time we get to Track 7, the table is set, the amplifiers have been turned up just a notch or two, and we get served up an iconic trio that comprises “We Can Get Down,” “Electric Relaxation,” and the aforementioned “Clap Your Hands.”
“Electric Relaxation” is the one that sets up the pinnacle of “Clap Your Hands.” Q-Tip’s flow here is pure conversational jazz – airy, impossibly confident, structured yet wildly surprising.
Shaheed, Phife and the Extra P
Stacy Beadle, PJ, and my man L.G.
They know the abstract is really soul on ice
The character is of men, never ever of mice
Shorty let me tell you about my only vice
It has to do with lots of loving and it ain’t nothing nice
“We Can Get Down” is one of my ultimate tracks to throw on while getting ready to go out of an evening. Back in those far gone NYC days, “going out” could mean heading out of the apartment as late as 10 p.m., with a night ahead that easily stretched to at least the 4 a.m. closing time that New York City bars offer.
It’s pure groove, mellow but exciting, with that catchy-ass chorus that simply makes you want to let everyone know that we can get down.
Straight from the heart, I represent hip-hop
I be three albums deep, but I don’t wanna go pop
Too many candy rappers seem to be at the top
Too much candy is no good, so now I’m closin’ the shop
They closed the shop indeed.
But in my mind’s eye, the 24/7 ‘90s downtown Manhattan playground is always open, forever just one play of “Clap Your Hands” away.
Some stats & info about A Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Hip-Hop, Rap, East Coast Hip, Jazzy Rap
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #201
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Midnight Marauders released? 1993
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #13 out of 1,000
A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
We can get down.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.