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Ali Shaheed Muhammad

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Ali Shaheed Muhammad is an American DJ, producer, rapper and bass guitarist, born in Brooklyn in 1970 and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant. He began DJing at the age of eight and programming music at thirteen. At secondary school he became friends with Q-Tip. In 1985 they made demos together, using recording equipment belonging to his uncle. Phife Dawg and Jarobi White then joined them, and so A Tribe Called Quest came into being.

Music and breakthrough

With Q-Tip and Phife Dawg he made five studio albums between 1990 and 1998. With Q-Tip and Jay Dee he founded the production collective the Ummah. After the group split up he formed the R&B supergroup Lucy Pearl with Dawn Robinson and Raphael Saadiq, which made an album in 2000. His solo debut Shaheedullah and Stereotypes followed in 2004. In 2013 he moved to Los Angeles to work with the producer Adrian Younge. Together they made the music for both seasons of the TV series Luke Cage and toured as The Midnight Hour. In 2020 they began the Jazz Is Dead album series, with jazz musicians including Roy Ayers, Marcos Valle, Doug Carn, Gary Bartz and João Donato. He is the principal bass guitarist on it.

Influence

From 2013 to 2016 he hosted the NPR radio show Microphone Check. In 2024 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of A Tribe Called Quest. He shows how hip hop and jazz can find each other, from the samples of the 1990s to the live jazz of today.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to an album from the Jazz Is Dead series, for instance the one with Roy Ayers, and notice the role of the bass and how the jazz sounds both warm and raw.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

Categories: Artists