Well, we’ve come to the last 24 hours or so of voting in the 2023 Rock And Roll Hall of Fame “fan vote,” and I thought I’d start expanding my territory, so to speak, into talking more often about things other than politics, by taking a look at this year’s Rock Hall vote – in part because it’s a pretty fascinating class and the decision-making was definitely not easy.
Another artist who I wasn’t super close to at the time, but have come to understand and respect their place in their context in the time since. Tribe were hugely influential and represent a great culmination/intersection of every facet of rock musically, and they helped establish and define and entire group of sub-genres within the rap/hip-hop world through their own work and the establishment of the Native Tongues Collective, a group of artists generally seen as intellectual, often very positive and uplifting, and wildly experimental in their sounds; other artists in the collective included De La Soul, Queen Latifah, the Jungle Brothers, and Monie Love.
From the bigger picture, ultimately they’re also fairly niche and I’m not entirely sure they’re rising above this pack to HOF level. Kind of the rap/hip-hip version of Iron Maiden in my mind, I guess, in terms of where I put them in the pantheon.
That said once again as with Kate Bush you absolutely must take into account the huge impact the band had on the overall sound. Most of the pop-hop stuff that’s hit in the last two decades can audibly trace back to these cats, including everything and everyone from PM Dawn to Pharrell Williams.
In spite of that, I don’t expect them to make a great showing this year but they should be nominated again, preferably directly instead of through the fan vote mechanism. Not only are they well deserving, I was somewhat surprised to find that a ton of the rap and hip-hop acts I was thinking “Tribe, but not…?” are in the hall already, which shows how much I’ve been paying attention. About the only folks I can think of who are eligible, fall within the broad scope of rap & hip-hop, and aren’t already in are Snoop/Death Row and KRS-One/Boogie Down Productions, so yeah. It’s fair time for Tribe, but I feel like they’re just fringe enough they’ll probably wait another 5-10 years before they get the nod in spite of that.
