Unbalanced film still captivates with narrative

Around the time gangsta rap brought an image of anarchy to the nation’s mind, another set of DJs and MCs from New York City created a different realization of hip-hop’s message — this one focused on afrocentric creativity. “Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest”

Starring: Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Jarobi White

Directed by: Michael Rapaport

Grade: B+

Around the time gangsta rap brought an image of anarchy to the nation’s mind, another set of DJs and MCs from New York City created a different realization of hip-hop’s message — this one focused on afrocentric creativity.

Michael Rapaport’s documentary chronicles the most prominent of those groups, A Tribe Called Quest — composed of Queens-natives Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White — on its rise to fame, dissolution and eventual reunification based on an indestructible friendship.

The film is riveting, but while the first half features spectacular cinematography and interviewing, the lacking second half looks like an ordinary documentary, chronicling events as they happen, lacking the rich visual and story of the beginning.

When the group members released their first album in 1990 — an opportunity made possible through their membership in a loose collective known as the Native Tongues — they created a sound that blended the musical history of black Americans with a cultural consciousness of what was happening in the America of their day.

They rapped about their skills, their passions and their lives in New York City like few had before. Over jazz basslines and a sample of Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” the quartet helped to create the foundation for hip-hop as it is today.

Each biographical section reveals a little more about not just Tribe’s history, but the four personalities involved. Quickly, a rift emerges between the Type A Q-Tip and Type B Phife, eventually leading to an eight-year breakup of the group. It was only eventually remedied by the other members’ desire to help Phife get through some tough times, such as his struggles in dealing with diabetes.

Musicians ranging from the Beastie Boys to Common and Santigold were inspired by Tribe’s adherence to it’s individuality., and they share commentary in support of the group through interviews that thankfully don’t verge on Behind the Music-style adoration.

Although the content packs an incredible story, it’s the cinematography that really takes this documentary to the level a group like Tribe deserves. The playful visual style feels both mythical and hyper-realistic, contrasting the colorful buildup of the band’s psychedelic Afro-influenced album art with the admitted imperfection of the contemporary personalities involved.

While the film is perhaps one of the best to be made about hip-hop in recent memory, it feels a bit unbalanced. The beginning is packed with many of the visuals and what seems like the majority of the interviews, leaving the “as it happens” second part feeling a bit sparse. Though the 98-minute running time helps prevent the film from verging into redundancy, the length does make the change in pace more noticeable. And while the second section shouldn’t be discounted in the least, but the inconsistency in visual style — more documentary in the second half — did not connect the past and present secctions effectively.

A captivating — if a bit unbalanced — testament to the power of both hip-hop and friendship, “Beats, Rhymes & Life” should make it to the top of any music fan’s must-see list.