Go Ahead In The Rain: Notes To A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib

Go Ahead in the Rain / Hanif Abdurraqib / University of Texas Press / 2019

When We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service dropped in November 11, 2016, all I could hear was my own wounds. At the time, the people around me hadn’t even found the courage to name Donald Trump, instead referring to him as 45 or awkwardly stumbling around his name in conversation. I had lost a relationship to a romantic interest and mentor in what was easily the worst heartbreak of my life. I was building a community for undocumented students in a hostile conservative environment. In my headphones, I had Emilio Rojas (especially I hate Donald Trump), Residente, Jamila Woods, and J. Cole. As an ardent hip-hop head literally co-teaching a Poetics of Rap class with Adrian Matejka, I knew I was supposed to listen to and love the new Tribe album. I simply couldn’t find it in me to digest it.

In need of a soulful and relaxing read, I turned to Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib a couple of weeks ago. I wanted an audiobook fluid and clear enough to listen to while I played video games, but still meaningful and important enough that I wouldn’t be better served by listening to music. I have been a long-time fan of Abdurraqib’s work. In 2013, I had the blessing of competing against him at the National Poetry Slam in Boston, before the Button Poetry deal, before the best-selling essay collections. There is a small place in my heart where a poet like Hanif will always exist in the crowded dimly lit slam venues, where he, she, or they will grace the stage and then disappear, forever out of your reach, only emblazoned on your memory. I come from communities historically excluded from publishing houses and official literary spaces. So, perhaps you can understand my joy as I began to see Abdurraqib’s star ascend. I eagerly purchased his first poetry collection and wrote this novice book review of his work. Now I turn to Abdurraqib’s work whenever I need a long and passionate eye, a stout and sturdy shoulder to turn to.

For newcomers to Abdurraqib’s essays, Go Ahead In The Rain steers far from the objective journalistic and academic style you might expect from a history book. This isn’t to say the book isn’t well-researched. Rather, Abdurraqib’s work is known—and loved—for his deeply personal forays into the contexts surrounding his subjects, including the material of his own life. Go Ahead In The Rain, for example, also narrates a portion of Abdurraqib’s middle school years and the definition of “cool” he had to navigate. A move like this would likely come across as navel-gazing or self-indulgent done by other writers. In Abdurraqib’s essays, such forays always imbue his subject with new and often surprising meaning. Understanding the definition of “cool” operative in Abdurraqib’s middle school in Columbus, Ohio proves enlightening to understanding the cultural niche the Native Tongues carved out for themselves.

Whether you’re watching The Get Down or Hip-Hop Evolution, or whether you’re reading The Rap Yearbook or Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop, you will inevitably notice the repetition of some of hip-hop’s most dramatic moments. Whether we are talking about hip-hop’s birth in the condemned streets of the Bronx or the beef between Biggie and Pac, there are stories hip-hop heads know and hold dearly. One of the sticks Tribe fans will measure this book by is how well Abdurraqib narrates these stories. For me, I love it when an artist can tell me a story I’ve heard a thousand times and still manage to teach me something new or keep me invested in the emotional narrative when I already know the ending of the story. I was excited by the narrative fluidity Abdurraqib brought to these stories, weaving personal narrative and hip-hop/political trivia into Tribe’s story without boring me or making me feel as if I am simply too old to appreciate what this story has to offer.

I especially dug Abdurraqib’s tender approach when narrating the tensions between Tip and Phife, his honest and critical appraisal of The Love Movement and its lukewarm reception, and his refusal to omit his own admittedly immature anger at Tip when Tribe broke up. No one could narrate the disappointments of Phife’s solo career with as gentle and loving of a hand as Abdurraqib. It was Abdurraqib who I turned to when Phife died, and he wrote this gorgeous elegy for him. One of the most heartbreaking and moving segments of the book is when Abdurraqib writes a letter to Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Phife Dawg’s surviving mother who also happens to be a remarkable poet in her own right. The letter gives the reader a chance to glimpse at an intimacy and engagement with grief and death that only those whose shouldered its burden would know.

I wrote this book review re-listening to We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, and entering more fully into its experience, grateful Abdurraqib gave me the push to explore not just Tribe, but a handful of classic hip-hop acts I have yet to get around to. For me, that is the true success of this book. I only interrupted listening sessions of the audiobook to return to the music, both familiar and new-to-me, Abdurraqib was engaging.  

I recommend this book to anyone interested in Hip-hop, Music, Black Studies, Biography, and creative non-fiction.