In 1990, Jive Records released A Tribe Called Quest's debut album, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. After Q-Tip raised the group's profile by performing on the Jungle Brothers' hit album, Straight Out the Jungle, A Tribe Called Quest rejected a series of lucrative offers from various major and mid-sized labels to record an album for Jive Records, then an independent hip-hop label known for launching the careers of such icons as Boogie Down Productions and Too Short. At the suggestion of the Jungle Brothers, a rap trio who attended the same high school, the group changed its name to A Tribe Called Quest. Fast-forward to 1985 when two high school friends in Queens, Kamaal Ibn John Fareed and Malik Izaak Taylor-performing under the monikers Q-Tip and Phife Dawg, respectively-joined forces with producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad and rapper Jarobi White to perform and record music as Crush Connection. Before launching into the story of A Tribe Called Quest, Abdurraqib relates a brief history of African and African-American music: 'In the beginning, somewhere south of anywhere I come from, lips pressed the edge of a horn…In the beginning before the beginning, there were drums, and hymns, and a people carried here.' In his phrasing of the migration of African music, Abdurraqib reminds readers that the vibrant evolution of blues, jazz, and hip-hop in America is ultimately rooted in one of history's greatest atrocities: slavery. Abdurraqib also includes elements of autobiography and social critique, billing the book as a 'love letter to a group, a sound, and an era.' The book’s title comes from a song on A Tribe Called Quest's 1990 debut album, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. In his non-fiction book Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest (2019), American poet and cultural critic Hanif Abdurraqib offers a critical analysis and history of the American hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest.

Tribe called quest go ahead in the rain