Music

An interactive guide to A Tribe Called Quest's 'Midnight Marauders' album art

by Daniel Gerichter

1993 was a good year to be a hip-hop fan. Between Wu Tang’s vicious mind games and Cypress Hill’s bong-feuled boasts, the genre was coming of age.

And in the middle of that, there was a Tribe Called Quest. Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Phife Dawg, critical, commercial, and club darlings, dropped Midnight Marauders, which proved their biggest album to date. It was a cross-section of their influences, friends, beliefs and passions, and to that point, Tribe enlisted art director Nick Gamma to create a cover that would ultimately become hip-hop’s Sgt. Pepper’s. Split into three covers, each with a similar grid of 71 faces, Midnight Marauders defined hip hop’s past, present, and future.

Thanks to a 1999 article by Ego Trip, nearly every face on those covers has been accounted for. This interactive guide digs in a little more, giving some information on where they’ve been, or, in some cases, where they went.

Hover your mouse over the points on each cover for more info:

Green Cover

Yellow Cover

Red Cover