Native Tongue(s) may refer to:
A Tribe Called Quest is an American hip hop group, formed in 1985, and is composed of MC/producer Q-Tip, MC Phife Dawg aka Phife Diggy (Malik Taylor), and DJ/producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad. A fourth member, rapper Jarobi White, left the group after their first album but rejoined in 1991. Along with De La Soul, the group was a central part of the Native Tongues Posse, and enjoyed the most commercial success out of all the groups to emerge from that collective. Their innovative fusing of hip hop and jazz has had a lasting impact on hip hop music, helping to expand the art of hip hop production. Many of their songs, such as "Bonita Applebum", "Can I Kick It?", "I Left My Wallet in El Segundo", "Scenario", "Check the Rhime", "Jazz (We've Got)", "Award Tour" and "Electric Relaxation" are regarded as classics by the hip hop community.
They released five albums between 1990 and 1998. The first three LPs were highly acclaimed, but the group disbanded in 1998. In 2006, the group reunited and toured the U.S., and planned to release an album after some works in the studio. The group is regarded as iconic pioneers of alternative hip hop music, having helped to pave the way for innovative hip hop artists. John Bush of Allmusic called them "the most intelligent, artistic rap group during the 1990s," while the editors of About.com ranked them #4 on their list of the "25 Best Rap Groups of All Time." In 2005, A Tribe Called Quest received a Special Achievement Award at the Billboard R&B Hip-Hop Awards in Atlanta. In 2007, the group was formally honored at the 4th VH1 Hip Hop Honors.
Greg Pattillo (born July 1, 1977) is a beatboxing flautist originally from Seattle, Washington but now operates in Brooklyn, New York. He was lauded by The New York Times as "the best person in the world at what he does." His performance videos on YouTube, showcasing "beatbox flute," have been viewed more than 20 million times.
Pattillo earned both his bachelor's and master's degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Music as a student of Joshua Smith, the principal flautist of the Cleveland Orchestra. After a summer spent as the acting principal flute of Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, Pattillo moved to San Francisco where he was a founding member of the Collaborative Arts Insurgency and the 16th and Mission Thursday Night gathering for performers. Pattillo enjoys freelancing as a soloist, and is the flautist of the group PROJECT Trio. PROJECT Trio is a chamber music ensemble, based in Brooklyn, NY. The trio features Greg Pattillo on Flute, Eric Stephenson on cello, and Peter Seymour on bass.
Flying Lotus (born Steven Ellison) is an experimental multi-genre music producer from Winnetka, California. His debut album, 1983, was released on Plug Research Records in 2006. He produced much of the bumper music on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block, for which he is uncredited, and he also contributed remixes for fellow Plug Research artists including Mia Doi Todd. He is often referred to as FlyLo by fans and critics. His grandmother was songwriter Marilyn McLeod. He is the great-nephew of the late Alice Coltrane, whose husband was John Coltrane. He is also the cousin of musician Ravi Coltrane.
In 2007, he announced that he signed with Warp Records. Following his Warp debut, the six-track Reset EP, he quickly became one of the label’s cornerstone artists and released his second album, titled Los Angeles, on June 10, 2008. In 2008, Flying Lotus also remixed "Reckoner" from Radiohead's album In Rainbows. His third album, Cosmogramma, was released on May 3, 2010, in the UK and May 4, 2010, in the US. In January 2011, Cosmogramma won in the Dance/Electronica Album category in the 10th Annual Independent Music Awards.
Roy Ayers (born September 10, 1940) is an American funk, soul, and jazz composer and vibraphone player. Ayers began his career as a post-bop jazz artist, releasing several albums with Atlantic Records, before his tenure at Polydor Records beginning in the 1970s, during which he helped pioneer jazz-funk .
Ayers was born in Los Angeles, California and grew up in a musical family. At the age of five, Lionel Hampton gave him his first pair of vibraphone mallets. The area of Los Angeles that Ayers grew up in, now known as "South Central", but then known as "South Park", was the epicenter of the Southern California Black Music Scene. The schools Roy attended (Wadsworth Elementary, Nevins Middle School, and Thomas Jefferson High School) were all close to the famed Central Avenue, Los Angeles' equivalent of Harlem's Lenox Avenue and Chicago's State Street. Roy would likely have been exposed to music as it not only emanated from the many nightclubs and bars in the area, but also poured out of many of the homes where the musicians who kept the scene alive lived in and around Central. His high school, Thomas Jefferson High School, produced some of the most talented new musicians, such as Dexter Gordon.