The Fabulous Fleas: the secret group from A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Jungle Brothers and Beatnuts
The Native Tongues hip-hop collective never released music under that name, but, all the same, it was hugely influential. Without it, we may never have seen alternative hip-hop artists like Outkast, the Roots or even the Black Eyed Peas emerge as they did.
Native Tongues was known for its bright and colourful jazz-inflected sounds, as well as for its positive, African-focused lyrics. Among the most important members were Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and Queen Latifah, while the group Beanuts were considered to be honorary members, too.
The late Trugoy the Dove, one-third of De La Soul, once explained how the collective first formed. “The Native Tongues came about where, basically, we had a show together in Boston,” he said, according to The GTC. “Jungle [Brothers] and we [De La Soul] linked from there. We had a natural love for the art and a natural love for each other on how we put stuff together.”
As Trugoy saw it, this project was about more than making it big. It was about art and collectivity for its own sake. “It wasn’t business,” he said. “It wasn’t for a check. It was just trading ideas and just seeing what you’re doing. Bottom line, it was just having fun.”
Q-Tip has also spoken about A Tribe Called Quest’s entry into the collective. As quoted by Consequence, Tip once said, “I remember Afrika [Baby Bam, member of Jungle Brother] called me that night, like, two in the morning. ‘Yo these kids, De La Soul, you gotta meet ’em! I swear we’re just alike!’”
Tip went to meet De La Soul, and it was, in his words, “fuckin’ love at first sight.” Tribe were soon a part of the Native Tongues movement, and Tip was so excited by its collective ethos. “In hip-hop, it praises individualism,” he said. “I think that’s the main achievement of the Native Tongues. It just showed people could come together.”
Tip was arguably right about that being the collective’s main achievement. They proved to be hugely influential, yet they never actually released music under the collective Native Tongues banner. Some members appeared on each other’s songs, of course, but there was never a Native Tongues album. The groups eventually grew apart.
But while Native Tongue’s output was fairly limited, it hosted experiments that, had things gone another way, may have resulted in some interesting releases. As JuJu and Psycho Les of The Beatnuts revealed on the Juan Epstein show in 2019, there once were plans to establish a supergroup from within Native Tongues composed of JuJu, De La Soul rapper Posdnuos, Q-Tip and Afrika Baby Bam. “We’re The Fabulous Fleas, yo!” JuJu recalled, revealing the group’s name.
Q-Tip also once confirmed that this Fabulous Fleas project was real. “Fabulous Fleas was something that we were going to do,” he told Moovmnt in 2009. “We actually recorded a little thing, it was just silly… It was like a little group we were gonna do.”