When you call yourself The Abstract, you’re allowed to be a little vague when you express yourself. Q-Tip lived up to his other nickname when I interviewed the Queens-born MC, who — after a much-anticipated reunion tour with A Tribe Called Quest — is currently touring in support of his solid new release The Renaissance. The star-struck part of me wanted to ask him to rap his verse from Dee-Lite’s “Groove Is In The Heart,” but considering that he was walking through an airport on a dreary Thursday morning, I figure it’s best that I refrained.

The Renaissance — Tip’s first official solo release since 1999’s Amplified — presents a smooth, relaxed MC, lounging alongside strong performances from D’Angelo and Norah Jones. The album came together in the years following his shelved Kamaal The Abstract project, but it’s hard for him to put an exact date on The Renaissance’s birth.

“I’m always doing music. The process is to keep going,” Tip says. “Different things come in and influence me. My focus was putting up a new canvas, because I think of music like art. This album represents two palettes on a canvas, with no real shape, no real form. The only consistency there is the colour, to me.”  

He also sees the record as the beginning in a series. “As I go on with these next few albums, I’m going to put in line, shape and definitions. This is only the beginning. It’s like when I was doing Tribe, when I did the first [A Tribe Called Quest] album, I kind of had the next two or three albums in my head. I have an idea of where I’m going.”

The production on The Renaissance was primarily done by the man himself, whose output extends beyond Tribe’s work — he created classic beats for Mobb Deep and Nas, among others. The disc’s lone exception is “Move,” produced by the late J Dilla, who Q-Tip says “changed what [A Tribe Called Quest] were.” The veneer and bounce of the album, as well as the MC’s chipper flow, give the album an optimistic feel, and in this newly optimistic time, it seems very apt, harkening to ATCQ’s earliest, sunniest sound.

“Innovation, to me, is not necessarily being incredibly unique. You can develop things that are unique and different, but at the core, there are [common elements] which draw people to things that are so amazing and so new that they ring familiar with you. They just seem new because they were so far removed [from you]. I believe in cycles and I believe that there are new approaches to old ideas, which is a beautiful thing.”

Tip dismisses the idea of any new releases from Tribe, although he will be appearing on Phife’s upcoming solo record (“It’s called American Bred, Trinidadian Grown. You know how he is.”) He does see things in hip-hop returning to something he understands, after a long period of champagne-popping. “We’re coming back to a different approach. It’s not going to be De La Soul or Queen Latifah again, it’ll be The Cool Kids and Kid Cudi.” He also still views himself as a viable part of the now. “When Miles Davis was in it, he was in the bebop movement, but he was also able to kick off a couple of other movements. But it was a different Miles Davis when he kicked off fusion than when he kicked off bebop, you know what I’m saying? Not to get deep, but it’s analogous to nature. Trees go through seasons, and so do people.”

Change, our needs as humans and hip-hop’s lifesaving qualities are all themes that run through the album, but love stands out as a dominant one — albeit more of a mature love than the lessons given in early ATCQ or in Amplified’s randier singles. “It’s a new level of maturity. We all try to make sense of [love]. It’s just different levels to relationships too. Different ways that you can speak about reciprocated vibes. You don’t just have one sort of relationship. That’s probably the most complex [subject] to me, relationships. It’s a beautiful complexity. If you score, it can be fruitful. They’re fruitful, and there’s so much promise in a loving relationship.”
His beats have changed over the years, no doubt influenced by shifts in production technology and associations with other groups, but his take on it is a little simpler.

“I just gotta keep it funky. That’s the main thing; I just wanna be funky. Even if it’s jazzy, even if it’s progressive, even if it’s pretty, there’s still got to be a degree of grease.”