Artist · chart history · #346 in indie & aaa artist polls
A Tribe Called Quest
Band St. Albans United States Active 1985–2017
A Tribe Called Quest formed in 1985 in St. Albans, United States and was active until 2017. A Tribe Called Quest has 61 chart appearances on 29 radio countdowns from 11 stations on RockLists, spanning 2004–2026. The most successful song on radio countdowns is “Can I Kick It?”, which appears on 15 lists with a best position of #8. The station that charted A Tribe Called Quest most often is The Colorado Sound (Fort Collins–Denver, CO), with 13 appearances. The artist’s biggest year on year-end countdowns was 2016.
A Tribe Called Quest came together in Queens, New York City, in 1985: Q-Tip rapping and producing, Phife Dawg as his rhyming foil, Ali Shaheed Muhammad on the decks and co-producing, and Jarobi White rounding out the crew. They helped found the Native Tongues collective in 1988 and became its most commercially successful act, and they are widely credited with blazing the trail for jazz rap and the whole alternative wing of hip-hop.
The debut, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, arrived in 1990 with "Can I Kick It?" and "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo", loose-limbed, playful and in love with crate-digging, and it became the first album ever to receive a five-mic rating in The Source. The Low End Theory, in 1991, stripped things back to deep jazz bass and crisp drums, with Q-Tip's laid-back cool bouncing off Phife's wisecracking punch on "Check the Rhime", "Excursions" and "Scenario", and Midnight Marauders followed in 1993 with "Award Tour" and "Electric Relaxation". Beats, Rhymes and Life gave them their first Billboard 200 chart-topper in 1996, and The Love Movement came just before the split.
They reunited in 2006 for occasional tours, and in 2016 released We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, a chart-topping farewell with posthumous verses from Phife Dawg, who had died 8 months earlier. They won the Brit Award for International Group in 2017, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in 2024.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs by A Tribe Called Quest on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Can I Kick It? | 15 | #8 | – | – | |
| 2 | Scenario | 9 | #62 | – | – | |
| 3 | We the People | 7 | #5 | – | 2016 | |
| 4 | I Left My Wallet In El Segundo | 6 | #81 | – | – | |
| 5 | Electric Relaxation | 4 | #159 | – | – | |
| 6 | Check the Rhime | 5 | #225 | – | – | |
| 7 | Award Tour | 3 | #303 | – | – | |
| 8 | Dis Generation | 2 | #13 | – | 2017 | |
| 9 | Bonita Applebum | 2 | #190 | – | – | |
| 10 | Excursions | 1 | #69 | – | – | |
| 11 | Scenario (remix) | 1 | #407 | – | – | |
| 12 | Push It Along | 1 | #412 | – | – | |
| 13 | Jazz (We've Got) | 1 | #521 | – | – | |
| 14 | Midnight Marauders Tour Guide/Steve Biko | 1 | #493 | – | – | |
| 15 | Electric Relaxation (Relax Yourself Girl) | 1 | #827 | – | – | |
| 16 | Buggin Out | 1 | #478 | – | – |
Albums with charting songs
Where each song was first released, from MusicBrainz.
Year-end chart timeline
Combined year-end countdown points per year. Taller bars mean more songs placing higher across more stations.
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