March 03, 2022
Q-Tip appearances are few and far between these days, so when the A Tribe Called Quest legend does emerge to share his talents with the world, it’s always special.
The veteran rapper/producer’s latest contribution comes courtesy of a new collaboration with The White Stripes’ Jack White called “Hi-De-Ho,” taken from the Detroit rocker’s forthcoming solo album Fear of the Dawn (out April 8).
The track finds Q-Tip evoking some of his high-pitched vocal performances on Tribe’s We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service while name dropping Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Chuck Berry, Jive Records and Cab Calloway, whose 1934 short film of the same name inspired the song.
“I just heard that Cab Calloway song on the radio in the kitchen one day and I thought, ‘I love that song, and it’s just so powerful. You know what would be great? It’d be great to sample that scatting that Cab Calloway does on there and have that scatting go along with a drumbeat,’” White told Rolling Stone of the song.
“So I sampled it and then just played a drumbeat that seemed to go along with it and then I grabbed a bass and I wrote a bassline for that drum beat and on and on it went. And then pretty soon I thought, ‘Man, this is so interesting. I wonder if Q-Tip would find something interesting about this?'”