8. A Tribe Called QuestMidnight Marauders

I just love the cover, with all of the faces, this idea, like, “Holy shit! There’s this gigantic crew!” This album was another revelation for me, just something that didn’t sound like anything else I knew at the time. It’s such a chapter heading for me, as far as ‘Oh, this is another thing that hip hop could be”. You can ride on with samples, and you can also use jazz instrumentation in a cool way, not in a corny way. Q-Tip’s voice is just forever, his rhyming is some of my favourite. They’re just such a powerful, powerful group, and they struck me as like a band, in the best way. Q-Tip’s really humble. It’s funny, that song ‘Vivrant Thing’ [off Tip’s 1999 solo debut Amplified] was maybe his most pop thing. And I don’t know what the story is, but I feel like for somebody who then could have taken a route that made them more blinged-out and more mainstream, he’s the kind of person who’d be like, “No, this the music I want to make, that’s actually more important to me”. He’s somebody I have a very deep respect for, as far as being an artist with integrity.