The incident that started the Q-Tip and 2Pac beef
Q-Tip was the frontman of A Tribe Called Quest, a hip-hop collective that changed hip-hop’s landscape in the late 1980s and 1990s. Encouraged by his counterpart, Phife Dawg, he led what was dubbed a “jazz-based hip-hop revolution.” The movement saw a soulful and jazz-inspired sonic adopted and a shift away from the angry anti-establishment aura of artists such as Public Enemy and N.W.A.
A Tribe Called Quest were an integral part of this incredible shift. However, few saw Q-Tip ever entering into beefs. However, in an interview with the Art Of Dialogue, Consequence claimed that Tip (real name Jonathan Davis) was once at odds with West Coast icon Tupac Shakur.
Revealing it all stemmed from a street beef in the New York City borough of Queens, Consequence explained, “Q-Tip is from my neighbourhood. He’s from Linda Boulevard, and 2Pac was running with a crew from Springfield called Live Squad. So they do what they do, we do what we do.”
After explaining the geographical differences and implying there was some underlying tensions between the two groups, Consequence continued to detail how the crews had a run-in at the Source Awards, explaining, “So the guys that are with Q-Tip, the guys that are with Run-DMC we all linkup we all rolling up, we all smoking and we see the Springfield n*ggas in there, and they see us!”
“They’ve had problems with our older n*ggas, so they see us, and they with ‘Pac. So when it gets to the time for Tribe to be presented [with their award], there’s a fight backstage.”
Consequence explained that it was all a misunderstanding but revealed that Q-Tip got arrested and, afterwards, the culture turned it into a Tribe Called Quest versus 2Pac feud. However, he insisted it was never a real beef.
Busta Rhymes, who was present at the Source Awards that year (1993) has detailed the story before. Recalling the misunderstanding, Busta told Fat Joe during an episode of the Joprah Show, “Tribe was doing their acceptance speech for ‘Best Group Of The Year’. They had one the award for that that year at The Source and 2Pac was supposed to be the next performance after their acceptance speech, and ‘Pac got introduced.”
He explained, “So somehow the production person, the stage production manager, wasn’t paying attention to what was really happening, and the motherf*cker ended up pressing play in the middle of the Tribe acceptance speech, so ‘Pac just comes out there performing in the middle of their speech.”
The beef never got violent, and no diss tracks were exchanged. However, during the early 1990s, it appeared to many that there was tension between Q-Tip and 2Pac. You can hear Consequence speaking about the street politics that transpired in the lead-up to the Source Awards in the video below.