KingsOfKings
❄️ 𝟐𝟐𝟕, 𝖂𝖍𝖊𝖗𝖊 𝖜𝖊 𝕬𝖙 𝖂𝖎𝖙𝖍 𝕴𝖙! ❄️
The Native Tongues collective is the rare crew with a storied legacy, despite having a paltry, one-song discography as an entire unit.
Why? Perhaps they are a shining example of the sum being greater than the parts. Perhaps it’s because they showed a generation of Hip-Hop heads that participation didn’t rely on a certain upbringing or style aesthetic. Or, perhaps, it was just because they were so fukkin’ cool.
This oral history, comprised of archival sources and new interviews, explores Native Tongues' origins, and the flowers that bloomed as a result of their contributions.
WHO:
Afrika Baby Bam (Jungle Brothers)
Mike Gee (Jungle Brothers)
Q-Tip (A Tribe Called Quest)
Ali Shaheed Muhammad (A Tribe Called Quest)
Posdnuos (De La Soul)
Maseo (De La Soul)
Trugoy the Dove (De La Soul)
Prince Paul (Stetsasonic)
DJ Red Alert (KISS FM)
Dante Ross (Tommy Boy Records)
KRS-One (Boogie Down Productions)
Monie Love (Artist)
Tyler, The Creator (Artist)
Pharrell Williams (Artist/Producer)
Sadat X (Brand Nubian)
Salaam Remi (Producer)
Talib Kweli (Black Star)
Jungle Brothers (Mike Gee and Afrika Baby Bam), Q-Tip, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad attend Murray Bergtraum High School in Manhattan.
Afrika Baby Bam (Jungle Brothers): Murry Bergtraum was a high school for business. It wasn't for fostering the arts. It was a TV production class, and there were talent shows and variety shows. But it wasn't a music and art school or a performing arts school.
Afrika Baby Bam: [Mike Gee] had the big, black bubble goose on. He was in the classroom right across from me. I never forget the day I met him. I go over and I'm, "Yo, I want to be in this talent show. Everybody say I got to check with you."
So he's, "All right. After class, we going to be in that staircase over there. We going to have a little jam session and see what we could do." So we go in there, the four of us, Brother J's on the beatbox. So we do this whole freestyle thing or whatever and then everybody's, "Oh, word. Yeah, we going to do this. We going to do this." One by one, everybody dropped off except Brother J and Mike Gee. And that's how we wind up being in the group together.
Q-Tip: I met Shazam who was Afrika from the Jungle Brothers and Mike Gee who was also from the Jungle Brothers, I met him there. His uncle was Red Alert, famed New York DJ from the Zulu Nation. And I met Ali in Bergtraum as well, it was just a lot of MCs up there. And we did this in high school too, we did “The Promo,” that was the first record. Afrika and I produced that record together.
Afrika Baby Bam: We [were] going into the studio to do Straight Out the Jungle. We had a couple of singles out and stuff like that, so towards the end of the album I said, "Why don't you come to the studio?" Because one of the demos [Q-Tip] played me was “Black Is Black."
He played me that and I was, "That's funky. That's cool. We could work with that. You should come to the studio and let's finish the verses. You know, get Mike a verse, get me a verse, reproduce the track." Organic. Out in Coney Island, Neptune Avenue. Down in the basement.
So it was Tony D and Oswald. By day, they were carpenters, so they were doing construction and all that. And by night, they was running the studio in the basement.
I had a little Dr. Rhythm drum machine, and I had a Casio keyboard, but I wasn't working with MIDI or Synthi or playing well enough to go straight to tape and a couple of takes.
I wanted to use the tools that I was more familiar with to get comfortable with making the records the way I wanted to in the studio, and they had turntables in there, which went straight into the board into the 16-track machine and I was able to punch in and piece together my loops that way. So, most of the Straight Out the Jungle was made off the turntables, which, I thought, was really cool because it was like you're DJing.
I remember me and Q-Tip doing a few takes of playing the hi-hats down and then doing a few takes of playing the drums down, punching in on that until we had five minutes' worth of recording, instrumental, and then go on a booth and do the vocals over that. So, again, that organic process is what was most memorable to me.
Salaam Remi (Producer): Growing up as a kid in New York at that time, what I taped off the radio was my fuel to get me to school. It was my gas and my bus pass. Walkman and bus pass is what got me to school. It wasn't just a bus pass. Being able to get through the cold, you had to make your tape at the weekend because Hip-Hop was only being played on Friday and Saturday nights and hopefully, you tape good stuff. Red Alert being family to the Jungle Brothers would always play certain Jungle Brothers records. There was certain songs that definitely pushed it there, but I'm sure the first one I ever heard was “Jimbrowski,” which made me go, "What in the word? What's a Jimbrowski? Who are these people, and what's happening?" They were also in an amazing push to the culture because it's always about not who's the fruit at the end of the tree, but who's actually going to start something that makes everybody wonder how to move forward, and Jungle Brothers definit
ely did that.
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Why? Perhaps they are a shining example of the sum being greater than the parts. Perhaps it’s because they showed a generation of Hip-Hop heads that participation didn’t rely on a certain upbringing or style aesthetic. Or, perhaps, it was just because they were so fukkin’ cool.
This oral history, comprised of archival sources and new interviews, explores Native Tongues' origins, and the flowers that bloomed as a result of their contributions.
WHO:
Afrika Baby Bam (Jungle Brothers)
Mike Gee (Jungle Brothers)
Q-Tip (A Tribe Called Quest)
Ali Shaheed Muhammad (A Tribe Called Quest)
Posdnuos (De La Soul)
Maseo (De La Soul)
Trugoy the Dove (De La Soul)
Prince Paul (Stetsasonic)
DJ Red Alert (KISS FM)
Dante Ross (Tommy Boy Records)
KRS-One (Boogie Down Productions)
Monie Love (Artist)
Tyler, The Creator (Artist)
Pharrell Williams (Artist/Producer)
Sadat X (Brand Nubian)
Salaam Remi (Producer)
Talib Kweli (Black Star)
Jungle Brothers (Mike Gee and Afrika Baby Bam), Q-Tip, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad attend Murray Bergtraum High School in Manhattan.
Afrika Baby Bam (Jungle Brothers): Murry Bergtraum was a high school for business. It wasn't for fostering the arts. It was a TV production class, and there were talent shows and variety shows. But it wasn't a music and art school or a performing arts school.
Afrika Baby Bam: [Mike Gee] had the big, black bubble goose on. He was in the classroom right across from me. I never forget the day I met him. I go over and I'm, "Yo, I want to be in this talent show. Everybody say I got to check with you."
So he's, "All right. After class, we going to be in that staircase over there. We going to have a little jam session and see what we could do." So we go in there, the four of us, Brother J's on the beatbox. So we do this whole freestyle thing or whatever and then everybody's, "Oh, word. Yeah, we going to do this. We going to do this." One by one, everybody dropped off except Brother J and Mike Gee. And that's how we wind up being in the group together.
Q-Tip: I met Shazam who was Afrika from the Jungle Brothers and Mike Gee who was also from the Jungle Brothers, I met him there. His uncle was Red Alert, famed New York DJ from the Zulu Nation. And I met Ali in Bergtraum as well, it was just a lot of MCs up there. And we did this in high school too, we did “The Promo,” that was the first record. Afrika and I produced that record together.
Afrika Baby Bam: We [were] going into the studio to do Straight Out the Jungle. We had a couple of singles out and stuff like that, so towards the end of the album I said, "Why don't you come to the studio?" Because one of the demos [Q-Tip] played me was “Black Is Black."
He played me that and I was, "That's funky. That's cool. We could work with that. You should come to the studio and let's finish the verses. You know, get Mike a verse, get me a verse, reproduce the track." Organic. Out in Coney Island, Neptune Avenue. Down in the basement.
So it was Tony D and Oswald. By day, they were carpenters, so they were doing construction and all that. And by night, they was running the studio in the basement.
I had a little Dr. Rhythm drum machine, and I had a Casio keyboard, but I wasn't working with MIDI or Synthi or playing well enough to go straight to tape and a couple of takes.
I wanted to use the tools that I was more familiar with to get comfortable with making the records the way I wanted to in the studio, and they had turntables in there, which went straight into the board into the 16-track machine and I was able to punch in and piece together my loops that way. So, most of the Straight Out the Jungle was made off the turntables, which, I thought, was really cool because it was like you're DJing.
I remember me and Q-Tip doing a few takes of playing the hi-hats down and then doing a few takes of playing the drums down, punching in on that until we had five minutes' worth of recording, instrumental, and then go on a booth and do the vocals over that. So, again, that organic process is what was most memorable to me.
Salaam Remi (Producer): Growing up as a kid in New York at that time, what I taped off the radio was my fuel to get me to school. It was my gas and my bus pass. Walkman and bus pass is what got me to school. It wasn't just a bus pass. Being able to get through the cold, you had to make your tape at the weekend because Hip-Hop was only being played on Friday and Saturday nights and hopefully, you tape good stuff. Red Alert being family to the Jungle Brothers would always play certain Jungle Brothers records. There was certain songs that definitely pushed it there, but I'm sure the first one I ever heard was “Jimbrowski,” which made me go, "What in the word? What's a Jimbrowski? Who are these people, and what's happening?" They were also in an amazing push to the culture because it's always about not who's the fruit at the end of the tree, but who's actually going to start something that makes everybody wonder how to move forward, and Jungle Brothers definit
ely did that.
The Oral History of the Native Tongues
This oral history, comprised of archival sources and new interviews, explores the origins and cultural impact of the Native Tongues.