A Tribe Called Quest – Dis Generation
2017 · Directed by Hiro Murai
52K Likes
Best comments
1.“Hello, hip hop. It's been a while.”
More comments
- 2.“Busta yelling at Busta was the best part.”
- 3.“I find it so funny, all the people saying 'this is real hip hop' and 'this generation of music sucks' – when the entire point of the song is that you can get equal levels of artistry from this generation's music.”
The story
A Tribe Called Quest waited 18 years between albums, then made their last one while losing a member. Phife Dawg died in March 2016 from complications of diabetes. He'd been riding out to New Jersey to record while on dialysis three times a week. Q-Tip finished We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, kept the title Phife picked, and it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in November 2016. Dis Generation was the second single.
Hiro Murai, who directed seven of the ten episodes in Atlanta's first season, shot the video in black and white as one long, never-stopping camera move. It glides from a subway platform to backstage to a concert stage to a street lined with vintage cars, all of it stitched into one dreamy loop. Q-Tip, Jarobi, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Busta Rhymes pop in and out as the camera passes, dancing among young people who look frozen in time.
Phife is in it too. His verse rides the track while his friends move through the frame. The song weighs what the young generation gets right and wrong, from a crew old enough to have earned an opinion. A goodbye record that keeps looking forward.
