The Love Movement is the fifth studio album by American hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest, released on September 29, 1998, by Jive Records. A concept album, The Love Movement explores the lyrical theme of love. Musically, it is a continuation of the group's previous album, Beats, Rhymes and Life, featuring minimalist R&B and jazz-oriented production by The Ummah. The lead single, "Find a Way", charted on the Billboard Hot 100 and was followed by a second single, "Like It Like That". The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on November 1, 1998. The group announced its disbandment a month before the album's release.
Background
The roots of The Love Movement trace back to 1997, when Q-Tip produced a beat intended for The Notorious B.I.G.'s album Life After Death. The Notorious B.I.G. enjoyed the beat when it was played for him, however, Life After Death had already been completed and the beat was not used before his death later that year. Eventually, the beat was used for the song "The Love" on The Love Movement. The album was originally slated for release in May 1998. However, on February 7, 1998, a fire at Q-Tip's home recording studio destroyed his entire record collection and a computer containing many unreleased songs by the group, including collaborations with producer Jay Dee, delaying the album until September of that year. A month before the album's release, the group announced that it was disbanding.
Music and lyrics
The Love Movement is a continuation of the stripped-down R&B and jazz-infused sound that The Ummah created on Beats, Rhymes and Life. The album contains an instrumental track, "4 Moms", which features a guitar solo by jazz guitarist Chalmers "Spanky" Alford. Lyrically, love is the album's predominant theme, while Q-Tip and Phife Dawg were noted for their "mature", "subtle" and "laid-back" rhymes. The featured rappers were given praise for making the album sound "livelier", as it was criticized for being "a little monotonous" overall. Thomas Golianopoulos of Spin hailed the single "Find a Way" as the group's "final glorious moment" before breaking up.
Reception
The Love Movement debuted at number three on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, on November 1, 1998, with shipments of 500,000 copies in the United States. The album received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Josef Woodard of Entertainment Weekly described it as "a slamming, seductively textured, and tough display of virtuosic rhyming and tale spinning." Dele Fadele of NME praised it for demonstrating "the continued survival of hip-hop as an artform", calling the album's songs "drug-free psychedelic experiences in which subsonic bass and weird-sounding beats play a large part." Rolling Stones Rob Sheffield believed that the "mature, accomplished niceness" of the album "proves that the Tribe still have the skills — they're just short on thrills." In a negative review, Tim Haslett of Spin wrote that the spontaneity that made The Low End Theory "so much fun" had been "replaced by a shiny patina and a flabby George Benson-esque seriousness, so that the record feels like it was conceived and executed around a major-label conference table." In a retrospective piece, AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted that "there are plenty of pleasures to be had from careful listening" of the album, and despite its love concept, he felt that "the overall effect is quite similar" to Beats, Rhymes and Life. Nathan Rabin of The A.V. Club stated, "While not as immediately accessible as Tribe's first three albums, it's still consistently solid enough to stand up to repeat listens." The Love Movement was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Rap Album, presented at the 41st Grammy Awards in 1999.
Track listing
All songs produced by The Ummah, except track 11 produced by The Ummah and Bay-Lloyd.
Notes
Tracks 1–4, 7, 8, 11, and 13 credited as "initiated by JD of The Ummah".
