The Low End Theory

For their second album, A Tribe Called Quest stripped the sound down to drums and upright bass and let the rhymes carry it. Ron Carter, who played with Miles Davis, came in to play live bass on one track. Phife Dawg, barely present on the first record, shows up here as a full partner, cracking jokes and trading lines with Q-Tip like they grew up finishing each other's sentences, which they did. It ends with Scenario, a posse cut where a nineteen-year-old Busta Rhymes walks off with the whole album.