Q-Tip will soon Rock the Bells
The performance of rapper Q-Tip has been announced for the stop in Miami, Florida, next August 2 as a part of the International Festival Series “Rock the Bells,” a day-long traveling festival that goes across ten outdoors stages located in different cities and states.
Rock the Bells is more than a live experience for Q-Tip and his fans, but an opportunity to introduce some of his new musical work to be released in the upcoming “The Renaissance” album. This is a long-time waited record, bearing in mind that Q-Tip released his previous solo album in 1999.
Q-Tip recent appearance at Bicentennial Park in between sets with Tribe produced the single “Gettin’ Up” that fans can listen at the rapper’s MySpace website, but from the album “Amplified” (”Vibrant Thing”) to “The Renaissance” there are almost ten years of difference.
The rapper describes “The Renaissance” as a transition work. In a recent interview he said, “I think it went off the track there for awhile, but it’s coming around to something more substantive and more imaginative, which is great.”
At Rock the Bells Q-Tip will perform the heading act alongside A Tribe Called Quest, his former group founded in 1988 that produced two of the most representative hip-hop albums before disbanding ten years later in 1998.
According to Q-Tip, hip-hop is suffering a transition, even though “The Renaissance” is a very hip-hop album plenty of life inspiration that is worth listen to.
Q-Tip was born Jonathan Davis on April 10, 1970, in Harlem, New York and changed his name to Kamaal Ibn John Fareed in the mid-1990s when he was converted to Islam.