A Tribe Called Quest - The Anthology

Jive put The Anthology out in 1999, a few months after the group announced they were done, and it remains the most sensible single-purchase entry point into one of the deepest catalogs in hip-hop. Nineteen tracks pulled from the first five albums, sequenced for flow rather than chronology.

What it does well is show the arc without narrating it: the loose, sample-hungry curiosity of People's Instinctive Travels in "Bonita Applebum" and "I Left My Wallet In El Segundo," the jazz-bass gravity of The Low End Theory in "Check The Rhime" and "Scenario," and the effortless mid-period confidence of "Electric Relaxation" and "Award Tour." Q-Tip and Phife trading verses across a decade, with Ali Shaheed Muhammad's production holding the whole thing at the same unhurried temperature.

It also includes "Vivrant Thing," Q-Tip's solo single, which in 1999 read as a full stop and now reads as a hinge. For anyone who owns none of the albums, this is the record to start with; for anyone who owns all of them, it is still the best party sequence available.