Okay, to start with, "Clap Your Hands" was never one of my canonical favorite songs by A Tribe Called Quest, but in the last year I've realized this has pretty much everything going for it that a hip hop song can have (and more specifically, speaks to Tribe's strengths).
Consider the song's opening. There was a book written back in the late '90s that I can't track down through Google at the moment, but basically it talked about how hip hop is about rhythm combined with rupture. That is, you've got the beat, but it isn't hip hop until you flip people's expectations. The opening of this song does just that. Give it a listen. You hear the beat repeated 4 times, with "clap your hands now" sampled over it 3 times. But the fourth time Ali Shaheed Muhammed, their DJ, adds in a slight hesitation and you get "clap your hands n- now" and it just kills me every time I hear it. Right there, that little "n- now," that's what hip hop is all about to me.
And then of course the opening verse has Phife Dawg rapping. He's certainly the less popular of the group's two rappers, with Q-Tip getting a lot more respect, but I like Phife. His lyrics rarely make any sense, but they're always fun. In this verse we have the classic boast: "Cock is longer than a hat worn by Dr. Suess." Okay, so Dr. Suess didn't wear any crazy hats, but we all know what he's talking about and we all have... um, an image left in our heads.
Then we have the chorus. If you listen you'll hear a few elements. The driving beat that's just kick, snare, hi-hat. The scratching of "clap your hands." Then you've got what I'm pretty sure is a Fender Rhodes electric piano. And finally the horn playing counterpart to the rhythm. You know what isn't there? Bass. And it's okay. The bass drum is more than enough. But it's that horn counterpart, it's like it's dancing with the damn beat, back and forth. It's magical.
Finally we can listen to this clip which has my favorite bit of the song in it. First, the obvious: we have a prime example of Q-Tip's rhyming. It starts out with him doing the typical rhyming on the twos and fours: "(1)Please don't do the (2)mute when you (3)hear me on the (4)juke". But then he masterfully switches it up next line: "(1)Brothas know my (2)angle, it's the (3)Star-Spangled (4)[pause] Black (1)Banner." And then for the next few lines he's rhyming on just the ones! Not only does he move his rhymes out of phase from 2-4 to 1-3, but he draws out the verse to half the rhymes per line just as the background Rhodes piano cuts out and the vibes come in! The crazy part is that the switch happens just as he's doing a cognitive switch: the Star Spangled... Black Banner. He's swapping in black power references here. And the whole song (and thus frankly my entire goddamn world when I'm listening) pivots about this musical and lyrical switch.
And then we get a little subtle thing I love--the transition back into the regular 2's and 4's is done by both dropping the beat on "do it" and then the Rhodes piano coming back in right after just a bit overdriven, with a heavy attack, before being mellowed out again. It's just perfect. Shaheed is a fucking genius. And of course we transition into another perfect rhyme: "You know I'm gonna do it / My shit is rock solid but it flows like fluid / Chemists get confused at my ill composition / This is the third of the new Tribe edition." And of course since we're still out of phase he provides the -ition rhyme five whole times to complete the transition and then we're back in our comfort zone. Confused at his ill composition indeed.
-Darius Kazemi, June 2008