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    "headline": "A Tribe Called Quest planned Midnight Marauders in Phife Dawg’s grandmother’s basement 33 years ag",
    "description": "A Tribe Called Quest planned most of Midnight Marauders, released November 9, 1993, in Phife Dawg's grandmother's basement, where Q-Tip had his own key.",
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    "articleBody": "One of hip hop’s most loved albums was cooked up in a grandmother’s basement. Q-Tip set up his production gear under the house of Phife Dawg’s grandmother, and that room is where A Tribe Called Quest planned most of Midnight Marauders, released on November 9, 1993. “My grandmother gave him a key, the whole nine, he used to just go in and do his thing,” Phife Dawg recalled. Thirty-three years later, the record from that basement has a platinum plaque and a spot on almost every best-of-the-’90s list. A key, a sampler and a lot of pressure The group had a hard act to follow: their own 1991 album, The Low End Theory. Phife Dawg later said the two-year wait left people asking whether Tribe could do it again, and that by the time Q-Tip finished sequencing the new record, he told him they had. The basement was busy. Q-Tip also built outside work down there, including the beat for “One Love,” which landed on Nas’s debut Illmatic in 1994. Large Professor, who produced “Keep It Rollin’,” remembered the vibe as casual: Phife watching basketball or playing video games while beats played, and nobody forcing anything. Formal sessions then ran for nine months at three New York studios, Battery, Platinum Island and Sorcerer Sound, wrapping in September 1993. Raphael Saadiq, credited under his birth name Raphael Wiggins, played bass on “Midnight.” The tricks inside the beats Q-Tip heard a party crowd react to the bassline of Jade’s “Don’t Walk Away” while he was DJing, and sampled it for the lead single “Award Tour.” On The Low End Theory, engineer Bob Power had scrubbed hiss out of the samples. This time Q-Tip told him to leave the noise in. “Lyrics to Go” rides a sustained whistle-register note from Minnie Riperton’s “Inside My Love.” On “Electric Relaxation,” Phife said he and Q-Tip swapped lines while recording, which is why the verses bounce back and forth. The cover crowd Look closely at the artwork. Behind the painted woman on the front and back sleeves sit dozens of hip hop faces: the Beastie Boys, Busta Rhymes, Chuck D, De La Soul, Grandmaster Flash, Ice-T, MC Lyte, Sean Combs and Too Short among them, 71 in all according to one count of rap lists. Busta Rhymes, who guests on “Oh My God,” said he cried when Q-Tip first played him the finished album. The sales timeline The album opened at No. 8 on the US albums chart and No. 1 on the R&B/hip hop chart. Gold came on January 14, 1994, 66 days after release. Platinum followed on January 11, 1995, making it the first Tribe album to reach a million, 21 days ahead of The Low End Theory. Badiyaa marked the strange coincidence that Wu-Tang Clan’s 36 Chambers and Midnight Marauders hit stores on the same day. The group’s story closed two decades later with We Got It from Here…, the final album Q-Tip made in secret at his home studio, which turned 10 this week. For more East Coast anniversaries, see how Method Man’s Tical survived a studio flood. In 2020 Midnight Marauders sat at No. 201 on a widely cited list of the 500 greatest albums ever made. It also reached No. 7 on the Greek albums chart in 2026. Further reading Wikipedia: Midnight Marauders Image: James Chutter, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.",
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