People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm / The Low End Theory / Midnight Marauders vs 3 Feet High and Rising / De La Soul is Dead / Buhloone Mindstate vs Straight out the Jungle / Done by

What

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J Beez screwed by formatting. Please familiarize yourself with all 3 groups’ first 3 albums before voting. I think they all peaked with album #3.

To those not interested - noted. Go away.

Full thread title reads: People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm / The Low End Theory / Midnight Marauders vs 3 Feet High and Rising / De La Soul is Dead / Buhloone Mindstate vs Straight Out the Jungle / Done by the Forces of Nature / J Beez wit the Remedy.

Definitely voting for the JBs. The unreleased original version of J Beez..., Crazy Wisdom Masters, is better, but not by that much! They were great.

Crazy Wisdom Masters is absolutely acceptable as a designated hitter. Sensational aka Torture was a wild influence at the time.

each answer is correct

I kind of feel like De La is the *right* answer but Tribe is the one I feel more

I love all these albums but voted De La. Might be partly because I just wrote a book about them so I've been steeped in the creativity of those albums lately. Tribe's second and third albums are probably my favorites among all this, though, and I might go find my cassette of Done by the Forces of Nature and listen right now

Tribe will walk this. De La could. Jungle Brothers won’t but maybe should. Tell me Q-Tip is not absolutely a disciple of Mike G.

Bonus points (which the poll can’t factor) to every/anyone revisiting these 9 gems on physical media. But whatever. Hear them how you will.

I definitely owned the first two De La, first two Tribe, and all three JBs albums on cassette in high school or shortly thereafter.

I need to familiarize myself with the JB’s. My current top three would be 1. Midnight Marauders, 2. Buhloone Mindstate, 3. De La Soul is Dead.

jungle bros

hurts my heart to not vote for the de la run tho

Listening to Straight Out The Jungle again this morning for the first time in years.

Voted for De La easily. I don't care for People's beyond the obvious cuts

PIT&tPoR is like a lot of classic early rap albums (Yo! Bum Rush the Show, Straight Outta Compton, etc): the highs are as high as highs ever get, but it's also full of dull tracks no one ever remembers or talks about

voted De La for the trifecta but there's no wrong answer here

Peoples is definitely the spottiest of these nine. I liked or loved singles by all of them at the time, but the De La albums were the only ones I shelled out $16.99 for on cassette

To those not interested - noted. Go away.

90% of that poster’s output is lurching onto threads about a clearly labeled topic and belching contemptuously at everyone in it for ever even thinking about the subject. It’s the sort of thing that would have got 51’d for sheer tedium twice a year in the ‘teens.

(I borrowed or went back later to the Tribe and JBeez albums, and add to the Crazy Wizdom Masters hailing. RIP rap blogs.)

Xpost - so true. I got defensive about his/their dismissiveness of what I genuinely think is a relevant discussion. No black medallions for him! Let’s all celebrate the miracle that is the first wave of The Native Tongues.

Tribe

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhDRFU9apR0

Voted De La Soul, less out of conviction that they're the strongest outfit of the three than because they're the ones I happened to follow through many albums. The Grind Date was such a joy when it came out.

Tribe because it's an incredible trilogy, and I don't think the 1st one is as spotty as others seem to think - Afterhours is my fav
thank fuck the label got them to drop Georgie Porgie from LET tho

midnight marauders is my favorite single album of these. tribe has been a constant part of my life, while de la has kind of come and went at various times (almost definitely has to do with how unavailable these albums were digitally—3 feet is the only one i owned, digitally or physically). had a big moment with the jb’s last year and the unreleased version of the third album is mind blowing. done by the forces of nature is massively underrated, too.

think im gonna go with my heart and vote tribe.

If I was going to vote in this, I would vote Tribe

However, I refuse to elevate any of these groups over another in the context of a poll. Let them all win.

Stakes Is High is my favorite De La album anyway.

this is hard for me in that i feel/assume tribe is the most popular, so preferring them feels basic to me. and while they are equally “important,” whatever that means, tribe is the best to me. maybe they just own my heart. i still listen to them quite a lot, others are more of a niche listen

damn this is hard. JBs are so underrated, Done By The Forces of Nature is one of my fav rap albums...Tribe is classic but People's is (IMO) the weakest overall album of these choices (still good though)...But overall, I feel like De La Soul is probably the most important of these groups, 3 Ft felt like a sea change when I heard it.

yeah it did to me too

tho early on i was “maybe prince paul is the genius there?”

If anyone needs incentive to revisit People”s, check the live link above and see how crazy hard Tip and Jarobi go in on Footprints.

really no wrong answers here. my favorite kind of poll!

tribe were akin to the beatles of hiphop for a while. a vote for them is an appropriate vote for the most popular choice. can't believe people's is on everyone's hitlist. it has "bonita applebum"!! i go back to it more frequently than midnight marauders these days.

de la wanted to change the game more than they wanted to be popular; arguably the definitive representation (on records) of what 'native tongues' was. a vote for them is like voting drexler over jordan- real heads can justify it. makers of my favorite hiphop album.

jbeez laid the foundation. literal trendsetters. i have to consider a vote for them just based on that. remedy has the distinction of being one of the weirdest-sounding hiphop records ever. now that de la is on streaming, it'd be nice to see the digital "reissue" of their back catalogue.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Note: Tom Robinson's 6music "now playing" show yesterday was a Tribe called Quest tribute night

I ordered enchiladas and I ate em
Ali had the fruit punch

^ An all time great couplet imho ^

The Spin Alternative Record Guide rated all of these in 1995. I guess Midnight Marauders in particular is underrated by contemporary standards, but they note the third Jungle Brothers record "received a rare dis in hip hop's magazine of orthodoxy The Source" while suggesting that it went over the head of the audience at the time.

People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm 8
The Low End Theory 10
Midnight Marauders 7

3 Feet High and Rising 9
De La Soul is Dead 7
Buhloone Mindstate 8

Straight out the Jungle 9
Done by the Forces of Nature 7
J Beez wit the Remedy 9

the 7s are the best records on there lol

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Predictable (and probably the correct) result. I’m of the mind that each peaked on their 3rd. Thanks to all for celebrating The Native Tongues. Black Medallions for us all.

No gold

I voted De La but it didn't really seem right, all three depended on each other, the whole movement was greater than the sum of its parts, viva Native Tongues