Earlier this year, it was announced that A Tribe Called Quest would be honored with a mural on the wall of Nu-Clear Cleaners on Linden Boulevard and 192nd St. in Queens, the very same spot they filmed their classic “Check the Rhime” video (and the stretch that’s now known as the Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor Way).
In this new video from Okayplayer, we get to witness the creation of the mural, which went up this summer, as well as the reactions of Tribe relatives like Jarobi‘s father and the late Phife Dawg’s wife and mother. Props to LeRoy McCarthy, Vince Ballentine and everyone involved in this special piece of art.
Sidebar: The Low End Theory turns 25(!) tomorrow.
Watch below…
Said Ballentine of the mural (via The Source):
It’s an actual mash-up of two album covers—Midnight Marauders and The Low End Theory—so you’ve got the same person in both and then I took those concepts and I put those side by side and the actual lettering on top of it was by [Zombart JK], so he transcribed it out for me and then he e-mailed it to us and so I put that in too, so that’s like the original type from the original record using the original images, it’s all paying homage to the whole process from the artists to the development to how things turned into what they turned into, that’s all in the painting too. We’re going to install heads in the middle, so the actual faces of the dudes are going to be wood joints and they’re going to fit in between the windows.
Related: There’s a New A Tribe Called Quest Album on the Way
