Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.

Here we go, yo:

I didn’t listen to all that much hip hop in 1991, but A Tribe Called Quest is the sort of group that makes you stand up and listen, regardless of what you think your musical tastes are.  “Scenario” has a great let’s all join in chorus, and the rapping between Phife Dawg and Q-Tip, plus the Busta Rhymes cameo, jaunts along infectuously.  Lyrically they mix silliness and a thoughtful agenda.  Let’s not forget the music, though: where Public Enemy piled up the samples so they often can’t be distinguished, creating a kind of hip hop version of the wall of sound, A Tribe Called Quest’s music is spare and spacious: there’s a lot of room to breathe in there.