Bangin' Commentary
If someone showed me their all-time top ten rap albums and the first three Tribe albums were one, two and three, I wouldn't be mad at them. I think if you weighed Midnight Marauders's goods against Low End Theory's the scale would be balanced. The choice comes down to which album means more to the listener. A lot of people resent MM because it's the first time non-rap fans started getting into Tribe. Then again a lot of people love MM because they weren't rap fans then and that album put them on to it. When I was younger I resented those kids but now rap is ubiquitous and everyone is invited to the party. In 1993 rap was mine and I didn't try to steal your Dave Matthews so beat it. That thinking gets us nowhere though which I realized when I grew up. Anyway, that's another story...
Low End will always be my favorite because of the anticipation built up in me by People's Instinctive Travels. The term "release date" did not exist for me prior to the buildup to Low End. I was 13 and I was a rap fan for 2 years already but in '91 I became a fanatic. My Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen CDs went to the used CD store (thank god in 1999 I rediscovered my love for Bruce). The intro to Midnight Marauders will never come CLOSE to the bass that kicks off Excursions. And when the beat kicks in after "Quest is for the booking"... it's musical moments like that that bookmark my life.
Also, I had the longbox for Low End taped inside my locker in 7th grade (replaced by I Wish My Brother George Was Here in 8th.) Longboxes were gone by the time Midnight Marauders came out. Case closed.
Low End Theory in a close battle won by Scenario. Plus, it practically invented the genre of jazz rap so I feel it has to get some pts for that. Then again, there were like four albums made in the jazz rap "era." And I'm not sure if I can name any that weren't done by Guru and/or Digable Planets. That being said, I wouldn't exactly be opposed to some more jazz rap action going on these days. Which is probably a post I need to start writing at some point.
I once dated a girl from Missouri who was a bigtime Low End fan as a teen, but somehow missed out on Marauders when she entered adulthood. I was just the opposite; I owned Marauders and let the tape rock til my tape popped, but had somehow escaped hearing Low End in its entirety. So when we got together we exchanged tapes. The results?
We both narrowly choose Midnight Marauders. She simply thought that sonicaly, MM was a bit more to her liking. For me it was a harder decision, but I choose MM, I think, because of the nostalgia factor. I had it the longest, played it an ungodly number of times. But Low End is definitely tight and had I grown up with it I may have chosen that one.
I don't think we should ignore the fact that the multiple covers for MM are totally awesome.
I was totally into MM way before I got into Low End Theory. I don't know HOW it happened that way but it did. MM blew my head off because it had big fat drums and smooth, colorful samples whereas Low End was bass-heavier, darker and slower but still ill.
"Electric Relaxation" will turn out any party any where to this day. The horns on "Oh My God" still get me amped when they hit after the kung-fu intro. "Award Tour" vs. "Scenario" is tough, I'll give you that.
Overall, I run with MM because it sounded like the logical progression from Low End, which is still a timeless, fantastic album. I hear the same thing when you go from Illadelph Halflife to Things Fall Apart.
I'm in the "discovered MM first" category. I sort of picked it up on a whim, and listened to it hundreds of times and fell in love with it, and I don't have the same emotional connection to LET. This post makes me think I should give the Theory some more listens, though.
Illmatic
Good choice with Low End..I would seriously go with illmatic or Paid in Full..any list without Rakim is incomplete..
Low End over MM by a slight margin.
This is kind of irrelevant, but I really really liked the Love Movement. Like... maybe more than MM. Any thoughts?
MM based purely on the the fact that it came out when I got my license and the tape is perfectly calibrated for aimless 16 year old late night driving. Award Tour, Midnight, Electric Relaxation. It's perfect.
I actually have a bit of Scenario backlash because I've heard it too much.
Phife's verse on Award Tour made me a hip hop junkie. I have to go with MM.
"My beats are hard like two-day old shits"
did someone really just say they liked love movement more than mm? i don't even hate lovemovement like some, but gtfohwtb.
even though my blog is called vibes and stuff, i'd say mm. low end theory is a classic in my book too, but mm is tribe at their peak and there's something that gets me about the intro of 'god lives through' every time i hear it.
I prefer Low End Theory for the simple fact that I skip 8 Million Stories on Midnight Marauders. Not saying it's a bad song per se, it just doesn't have a vibe that really meshes with the album or with much of Tribe's best music. I skip nothing on Low End Theory, it's one of those few perfect albums of any genre. That said, I gotta agree with GentleWhoadie9000.
LET, and it's not really close for me. I was disappointed on my first listen of MM, and though it's grown on me since then, you never get a second chance.
Both of them are undeniably classic. It doesn't really make sense to ask which is better. Is Talking Book absolutely better than Innervisions? Is Giant Steps better than A Love Supreme? It all depends on the person, and sometimes, the mood.
I prefer MM as an album, even though both are filled with incredible songs. On a technical level, I always fast forwarded through "Rap Promoter" and "Show Business"--I simply never cared about rap about rap (at least the industry shit).
But my preference for MM mostly has to do with timing: I hadn't even hit puberty yet when I fell in love with LET, while MM caught me in the midst of puberty. All of the classic albums that dropped during this period have a greater hold on me because, even though I didn't know shit about life, I was old enough to relate to sex and more "grown up" shit. MM was the soundtrack to my maturation, hence the added nostalgia factor.
Plus, I think Q Tip just murdered MM. He somehow improved on his performance on LET and peaked as a rapper on that album. After that, he only reached the same heights on "Separate Together."
And I always thought that Love Movement (and Beats Rhymes and Life to a lesser extent) was unfairly hated. It's definitely not as good as the classic Tribe joints, but they had a vision and executed it about as well as they could have. About a third of that album is butter. I still listen to a number of the songs.
Low End Theory was the Rice
Midnight Maurauders is the Beans
Low End Theory. The beat in Check the Rhime, and the way they dance around it (and each other) is pure magic. And since the other half of my library is jazz, I love what they do in Excursions and We've got the Jazz. Scenario is just explosive and powerful. Nobody fucking rapped like that in 1991, and here's a 19 year old who's about to blow up.
Don't get me wrong, comparing these two albums is like comparing winning a million dollars vs. winning a million and ten dollars. But there's no question in my mind that the nostalgic and technical and creative impact of LET was superior.
Marauders is an all around better album. Low-End is great, but its a bit more jazz-niche. I think Low End is compared for sentimentality reasons and since that was the album that really established them.
By the way I'm going to do a feature on Tribe for Gawk sometime in the near future, will get into this some.
Low End Theory wins in a landslide. Tip draws you in with the dynamic Excursions, and they never let up. I'm about to head over to Ruckus now and download that album. Thanks!
Midnight was the album that introduced me to Quest and the larger hip-hop world as a whole.
To this day the opening stanza to Electric Relaxation sticks in my as if I heard it for the first time.
I still go between People's Instinctive Travels, Low End, and MM. But MM will always be my favorite.
GROWING UP IN PRE-CRIZNACK NYC WAS A
TIME UNPARALLED IN MY LIFE...THE BEST MUSIC,THE BEST FOOD,AND THE MINIMAL DAMAGES OF UNSAID STD'S.
ATCQ BRINGS ALL OF THIS BACK IN A RUSH
MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS WAS THE EPITOME OF THE EARLY 90'S
http://insaneexistence.blogspot.com/
low end theory has better peaks and better singles (and "show bizness" and "what") but it also has a bunch of clunker identity-search bullshit like "skypager".
mm is kind of homogenous and pretty much anything could have been a single there, but there aren't many albums that maintain as high a level of quality as marauders does. i used to play phife's verse from "keep it movin" all day on some oh-shit-he-sang-the-barney-song.
oh and i think it's safe to say we all hated beats rhymes and life because none of us were ready for dilla. just sayin.
It's a tough call, but I gotta go with MM. My reasoning?
Skypager and 8 Millions Stories are my two least favorite Tribe songs, and I definitely dislike Skypager more.
"Lyrics to Go" was my SHIT on MM.
The horns just help me to zone out.
Damn, tough call. It's like choosing between who's hotter: Beyonce or J-Lo.
I'd have to go with Midnight though. A bit more lively, even the skits are entertaining. Close call though, Scenario can almost carry LET on it's own.
I just happened to have stumbled upon your site which is really odd becuse midnight marauders is in my player as I type...scary. It remids me of my childhood and spoke to me even then. It is classic, I am honestly not a hiphop head but I do like a couple of songs here and there...I usually prefer the traditional booty shaking anthems of the south and nother more...but there is no way to deny Marauders powers...Electric Relaxation will be played at my wedding, no questions asked...
Wow - what a close Call: LOW END THEORY or MIDNIGHT MARAUDERS... I had to think and listen to the two albums and my answer is more complex than I expected it to be, so I answer on focussing on different aspects.
1991 - for me this has a long time been my favorite year in rap (yeah in 91 they referred to it as 'rhythmic american poetry' remember?). Well, at that time I was 14 years old. This was the Time when the west coast was blowin' up: on the production tip almost nobody could fuck with the west except for the Bomb Squad, Pete Rock, Diamnod, Primo, Tippster and Prince Paul, no doubt.
To get specific, I am talking about great albums from 91 aside LOW END THORY, that I pumped hundreds of times. On the West you had: CMW - Streight Checkn Em (remember Groin up in tha Hood?), WC and THE MAAD CIRCLE (crazy crazy crazy slept on - get it), Ice-T's OG (heard it all the time), Ice Cube - death certificat (check the funky-ill productions steady mobbin), NWA's Niggaz for Life (oh my god) and houston got real big with The Geto Boys dropping We can't be stopped (now if that aint playin tricks on ya) and Scarface's first Solo LP in the same year. On the east coast you had Naughty by nature's 1st LP, De La dropped De la soul is dead (A roller skatin jam named saturdays - thanks prince paul for inventing the SKIT) and then you had PE Apocalypse 91 (remember by the time I get to arizona?)
So when I reflect on what I was pumping back then, I would have to say I Low End was not as present to me as the other records I mentioned. Don't get me wrong: Nowadays, I love Check the rhyme, jazz we've got, Scenario (off course) and my personal favorite Verses from the abstract (my personal favorite)! But the only reason I got that album is because I sunk into the eastcoast deeper after Dre dropped the chronic in '92 and changed the sound of music dramtically and forever. That was mainly because a lotta whack thought they can bite Dre's style and could produce G-Funk. So they exploited Dre's style and flooded the marked with some incredibly whack-ass shit, where the beeping was more important than anything, sampling the same shit over and over again (e.g. I got like 10 Rap-A-Lot-Records using the same funkadelic drum over and over). So as much as I loved The Chronic and still do (No. 1 to me), that was the first time I got a lil bored by rap (as if it would not gonna happe again.. 
So one year later - it's 93 now, I watch YO MTV Raps and I'm like: Yo, what the fuck, who whos is that?? M-E-T-H-O-D Man... I was like yo, that's the shit (unbelievably mind-blowing).
When I turned 18 Gang Starr dropped Hard to earn in 94 and a lil later Gurus Jazzmatazz 1 dropped and I was feeling the east more and more.
Around that time I bought Midnight Marauders for 10 Marks in 95 or so after I saw a Wu-Video in which rae was having this Midnight Marauders Clock hangin on the wall. So I bought the record and played it (I am listening to it as I am typing)and was blown away as soon as I heard 8 million stories. And when sucker nigga came on I was like, 'Oh my god, what a gem'. I heard it 5 Times in a row - man tip was so on point with his lyrics and what he was saying the bass line and the rhodes n shit...so uplifting and raw at the same time. And the whole sound of this album continued to be warm and live sounding with a jazzy steelo. So thats the reason why I got low end theory in the first place - because of Midnight Marauders.
To come to a final conclusion: For tribe I think THE LOW END THEORY was a destinctive Milestone in the artistic direction or position on the musical landscape in terms of style and production techniques (stand-up, bass, jazz-samples, organic sounds, sampling methods and the native tongue topics). But all in all, I think on Midnight Marauders they took all these elements and perfected them in terms of creating a well-rounded album, which you can hear from beginning to end without skipping tracks or getting bored by it. In other words it's a major top 10 all time classic.
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