Midnight Marauders Tracklist
Tribe follows their critically acclaimed sophomore album, The Low End Theory with yet another critically acclaimed effort with their third album, Midnight Marauders. This classic album was released on November 9, 1993—the same day New York collective Wu-Tang Clan dropped their classic debut, Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 Chambers, as the East Coast was competing with the G-Funk sounds of the West Coast.
Midnight Marauders isn’t as “jazzy” as The Low End Theory but it is still very sample-heavy, courtesy of the production from Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, as well as the group’s associate, Skeff Anselm, and Large Professor, who produced and rapped on “Keep It Rollin'”. At a time when gangsta rap was dominating the hip-hop scene, Tribe continued their tradition of creating lighthearted and funky boom-bap tracks and showcasing their back-and-forth rhyme style.
The album was supported by the singles “Award Tour”, “Electric Relaxation”, and “Oh My God”. Their single “Hot Sex” from the Boomerang soundtrack was added to re-issues of the album, which peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200 and topped the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart on its way to platinum status. Like The Low End Theory, Midnight Marauders was also featured on a number of “best of” lists, including The Source’s list of The 100 Best Rap Albums of All Time, Pitchfork’s Top 100 Albums of the 1990s, and German magazine Spex’s list of The 100 Albums of the Century. The album also had three different covers featuring pictures of many different hip-hop figures.
“Midnight Marauders” Q&A
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Why was there a computerised narrator throughout?
Everybody was used to hearing that kind of voice whether they were calling a phone company or they were on hold. There was always some type of monotone female voice that had a computerized vibe that was giving you information. So I thought how cool would it be if you called to pay your bill and then you would hear this female voice started rattling shit off like, ‘Keep bouncing?’
— Q-Tip, Vibe, 2011
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What did the artists say about this album?
At first there was a lot of pressure, because everybody was so gung-ho about the Low End album, and that came out ‘91. Obviously, that’s a two-year wait, so there was a lot of pressure like, 'Can they do it again?’ Q-Tip is really hands on, Tip is a genius, so by the time he was finished sequencing the album, I was lookin' at him sayin, ‘Yo, b, we did it again.’
— Phife Dawg, XXL, 2013
