So Lupe fucked up the lyrics to the Phife verse on “Electric Relaxation” during the tribute at Hip-Hop Honors on Thursday night. Since the above clip hit Youtube, the internets have been in an uproar over the flub and the whole situation recently earned itself a coveted “gate” suffix.
If you recall, long before the HHH show, Lupe famously said that he had never even heard the Midnight Marauders album. So why is he taking part in a Tribe tribute you ask? Well apparently Q-Tip personally asked him too.
So Lupe responded to critics’ assertion that he disrespected Tribe by basically arguing that he isn’t familiar with their work and he didn’t want to do it in the first place. On the Okayplayer message boards, he talks about how he came up on gangsta music, not “backpack” rap and goes so far as to type in all caps.
That particular post has now prompted a response from Phonte of Little Brother which you can read here. Here’s an excerpt. Cap statements are Lupe’s the rest is Tigallo.
>HAVE I LISTENED TO MM IN ITS ENTIRETY?…NO!!!…(Sorry
>Quest)…This statement is nothing but pure arrogance. I wonder how your friend Q-Tip would feel about you ‘having no interest’ in hearing what many consider to be his landmark album….especially after you forgot his lyrics during a tribute and your only defense is, “hey, shit happens……but I still ain’t listening to the album tho…”
Lupe, I fucks with you my dude, but you were wrong here. After watching the video, you really didn’t even fuck up that badly, so you should’ve just kept your mouth shut when the criticism came. But like Phonte said, now you’re coming off as arrogant and disrespectful to people like myself who hold Tribe in the highest possible regard.
At the end of the day, I’m still gonna fuck with you, but I think you should take a close look at how this whole situation played out and what went wrong and use it as a learning experience. To me, it’s unacceptable that any professional rapper could have never heard Midnight Marauders. Particularly one whose work is so Tribe-esque.
That’s like Beanie Sigel saying, “I’ve never heard a Kool G Rap Record and don’t care to.”
- From Nah Right
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