It would be cloyingly insecure of us to try to tell anyone how to digest the genius blend of musicianship, innovation and wordplay that is Kamaal The Abstract. Q-Tip's third, long awaited solo CD is an aural elixir that speaks easily for itself. It does, however, get even better with back-story.

Conceived way back in 1999, the album is the lovechild of two distinctly dissonant moments in the veteran rapper's life. The first was the embattled state of hip-hop circa 1999; a time when many longtime fans and artists felt like the music was quickly succumbing to the mind-numbing repetition and commercialism. Q-Tip was one of them  "I felt like hip-hop was dead," he says. "It was misogynistic. Nobody was taking chances. I felt like the musicality was missing. Like it didn't have any soul. And I felt like it was heading pretty much to where it is right now." 

Hot off the heels of the hit single "Vivrant Thing,"he wanted to do something "totally different". So he approached then President of Arista Clive Davis about doing a record in the spirit of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, the legendary album which personified Miles' "screw the industry, the rules and the sorry state of music as we know it" attitude.  Davis, who was the A&R guy for Miles' Bitches Brew, co-signed Tip's vision and gave it his blessing.

At the time, Tip had no idea how "totally different" this album was about to become. Barely into the process, a house fire destroyed practically everything he owned. "When my house burned down I lost my beats, my records— everything. But I still had music in me. I wanted to make music, but I had to learn how to do it without the tools that I normally had. So I learned how to play piano. I studied theory." Similar to how he used to scour obscure record stores to dig through the proverbial crates, he combed through jazz clubs and studio sessions discovering kindred musical spirits and aligning himself with talents like Kevin and Chris Sholar, Guyora Kats, and Aisha Morris (daughter of the legendary Stevie Wonder). "I started going out looking for fresh names and talents. Once I heard them play and I eventually started putting everybody together in a room."  The sessions that ensued became the foundations for Kamaal The Abstract.  They also forced Tip to redefine his own musical boundaries and move way beyond his previous comfort zone. "Being around musicians forced me to speak their language," he explains.  "I had to humble myself and allowed myself to experience a state of submission.  The whole experience heightened the musicianship in me."

The 10-track result, which forays seamlessly across the terrains of soul, jazz, hip-hop and more, defies easy categorization. Tracks like "Abstractionism" and "Feelin'" make good use of Tip's signature rhyme style and his playful but smart social critiques and yet their magic also lies in the endless array of live, lush instrumentation that dominates the album. "Feelin'" for example starts out as a critique of racial profiling but it's the repetition of the soul-filled, harmonious hook Yo we gotta bring back that boom-bap/What's happening to that feeling that quickly emerges as the album's mission statement.

On "A Million Times" there is no rhyming at all but the driving, sexy reiteration of two simple lines I thought I told you a million times/We're gonna do it again and again simultaneously evokes sex, success and scolding and makes full use of Tip's signature capacity for lyrical wordplay and double entendre.

"Blue Girl's" gorgeous harmonies easily evoke the vulnerability and emotional complexities of 70's soul love songs while "Barely In Love" calls to mind a Sly and the Family Stone-esque merge of soul, funk and rock and roll. With all this going on, even Tip is hard pressed to define Kamaal The Abstract as a hip-hop album in the traditional sense. " I would call it music," he says. "There's a bit of everything in there." Which may explain, in part, why after Davis' departure from Arista in 2000 the album sat for almost a decade until the success of Outkasts' Speakerboxx and circumstance brought an industry far more comfortable with bandwagons than innovators, up to speed.  And yet a hip-hop album is exactly what Kamaal The Abstract is, precisely because it pushes listeners fan past what was once believed to be possible.  "I wanted to take the risk and do the experimentation, especially when it comes to new ideas," Tip explains confidently. "Because that's what hip-hop is. Our whole shit was built on chance and making something that people had never heard before."