That was how a 19-year old rapper named Q-Tip described the expectations he and his group were facing on the cusp of their debut album. That group, of course, was/is A Tribe Called Quest, one of the most revered acts in Hip-Hop history. But in 1990, they were just the newest group to emerge out of a critically-acclaimed collective called Native Tongues. And that collective had already delivered major works from the Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah and De La Soul. So yes—these new "Tribe" guys had a certain standard to meet.

The group had its nexus in the same place as the Jungle Brothers: Murry Bergtraum High School. It was there that a young Jonathan Davis began freestyling against his peers, eventually befriending Mike Gee and Afrika Baby Bam of the Jungle Brothers. He also became chummy with an aspiring deejay named Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who'd noticed Davis rhyming "Adventures of Super Rhyme" by Jimmy Spicer. Davis was calling himself "MC Love Child" and he teamed up with Muhammad in a duo they'd come to call simply "Quest." Things were fast tracked when Mike Gee was able to parlay his relationship with his cousin, the famed DJ Red Alert, into a J.B.'s record deal. Q-Tip was beginning to show real promise as a producer, and he helmed the Jungle Brothers' first single "The Promo," and contributed a verse. It would be his first appearance on an official release.

"I was just always catching beats and doing pause tapes at the time, shit like that," Q-Tip would recall in 2009. "We went to school together… me, Mike G. and Afrika. Then they started putting their stuff together for their album and I had a couple of little pieced and that’s how it went down."

And Q-Tip wanted his childhood friend Malik Taylor to join the group. Dubbed Phife Dawg, Taylor had grown up just minutes away from Q-Tip in the St. Albans neighborhood of Queens. The two of them had always recorded demos together, oftentimes with another neighborhood friend named Jarobi White. With Phife and Jarobi onboard, A Tribe Called Quest was officially a quartet.

Q-Tip had been making demos at home since the early 1980s using only a dual cassette deck and his imagination. Now, his years of ingenuity would form the basis of Tribe's first album. After "The Promo," Q-Tip and Ali landed a deal with Jive Records; these "pause tapes" were refined by the pair as they set to work on A Tribe Called Quest's debut.

“We didn’t have any setups, we didn’t have any track machines. We didn’t have any of that stuff, so what we usually had was some janky-ass stereo system that you moms and your grandmother had,” Tip told Jeff “Chairman” Mao in a Red Bull Music Academy interview.

And like their Native Tongues compadres, A Tribe Called Quest reveled in whimsy and quirkiness. Tribe's first single would embrace the group's nerdy tendencies with aplomb, telling an entirely unique story about a road trip and a wallet--that was partially inspired by Sanford & Son.

"I Left My Wallet In El Segundo" was the first commercial single from A Tribe Called Quest. Flipping a sample of "Funky" by The Chambers Brothers, the track was an undoubtedly oddball introduction to the latest Native Tongues act.

“Nigga always be like, ‘Esther! I’ma leave you in El Segundo if you…,’” Q-Tip told Drink Champs years later about the song's inspiration coming from Redd Foxx's Fred Sanford character. “He always made El Segundo references on that shit.” The rest of the group didn't even know El Segundo was a real place.

People's Instinctive Travels and The Paths Of Rhythm arrived in the spring of 1990, an album steeped in Q-Tip's inventiveness and he and Ali's love of jazz. It followed the critical acclaim of De La Soul's 1989 debut 3 Feet High & Rising, even if it didn't quite reach that album's commercial heights. Despite confounding some critics (Rolling Stone famously declared it "the least danceable rap record ever made"), People's Instinctive... was nonetheless widely acclaimed. And the album's second single further cemented that they weren't a one-trick pony. "Bonita Applebum" maintained Tribe's established quirkiness while also highlighting Q-Tip's flirty, ladies' man persona. The video was another popular clip for Tribe, further establishing the group as a new voice in rap music.

Over a sample of "Daylight" by The RAMP (Roy Ayers Music Productions), Q-Tip kicks some lines to the young lady catching his attention.

“Actually, I did ‘Bonita Applebum’ when I was 15," Tip told VIBE in 2012. "I had a different couple of versions of that song and then I flipped it to another version when I turned 18.”

People's Instinctive...'s jazz fetish is it's greatest strength; even at this early stage, it's clear that Tribe isn't going for all over-the-place musical eclecticism quite like what Prince Paul did on 3 Feet High... It's just as creatively ambitious but more sonically restrained and cohesive, even as the still-youthful group indulges in adolescent in-jokes like "Pubic Enemy" and "Ham N Eggs." The samples bely Q-Tip and Ali's exquisite taste: from Earth Wind & Fire's glorious "Brazilian Rhyme" harmonies announcing "Mr. Muhammad," to the horns of "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder forming the foundation for "Footprints" before the song gives way to the groove of Donald Byrd's "Think Twice." The stellar "Youthful Expression" is born of a sample of Rueben Wilson's 1974 instrumental cover of "Inner City Blues."

It's understandable that many assume that Q-Tip and Ali were the creative drivers of People's Instinctive Travels... The lack of Phife Dawg's presence on the album is well-documented; Phife was still only moderately interested in A Tribe Called Quest and he and Jarobi were somewhat marginal during the album's recording. Nonetheless, Jarobi serves as the album's spiritual "tour guide," announcing everyone from the beginning, on album opener "Push It Along." That song neatly captures the early Tribe ethos; and establishes how much Jarobi has always meant to it.

The clarification of who was or was not officially A Tribe Called Quest was still murky as they were recording Peoples' Instinctive Travels... Phife wanted to rap, but wasn't sure about being in Tribe; so he planned to just appear on a few tracks and then he and Jarobi could release music as a duo. But on the album cover, there was a four-man silhuoette, alluding to the group's togetherness even before things were solidified.

"So the logo (on the first album) was done," Phife explained to HipHopDX in 2015. "We were already used to it, and it just fit regardless of what was going to happen. We put it out there like that. I mean, we were members of A Tribe Called Quest, not just contractually, though. Contractually, we were, but… You remember when P. Diddy had Making The Band and all of that? Tribe was never like that. We were friends way before any of this. You know what I mean?"

Even though he only appears on four tracks, Phife does make his presence felt. Their chemistry would be better showcased on the subsequent albums that followed Peoples Instinctive Travels and The Paths Of Rhythm, but even here, Phife's presence as a vocal counter to Q-Tip is obviously effective. He shows up on "Ham & Eggs" advocating for eating healthy and only enjoying "the occasional steak," and delivers an early standout moment on the album's third single, the beloved "Can I Kick It?"

Whatever pressures A Tribe Called Quest may have felt to meet the standard set by the Jungle Brothers and De La Soul, whatever uncertainty anyone may have had about Q-Tip's bonafides as a producer or the group's status as an actual group; Peoples Instinctive Travels and The Paths Of Rhythm made it clear that A Tribe Called Quest was a formidable new act, and there was a new wave of bohemian, Afrocentric rap artists looking to push the genre into new territory.

"When I did Tribe… like, a lot of people didn’t know that I produced the first 3 Tribe albums," Q-Tip said in 2009. "Because on it, it said 'produced by A Tribe Called Quest.' I put that because I didn’t feel like the individual should be greater than the unit. And I was raised to believe that the unit represented strength. It was strength and numbers. So if you moved as a unit that was it. That’s why I wasn’t into 'produced by Q-Tip,' I was like let’s just say 'produced by A Tribe Called Quest' and we can all benefit from it."

But even decades later, Phife was still ambivalent towards People's Instinctive Travels....

“I really wasn’t involved [in People’s], to be honest," Phife said in 2015. "I’m only on four songs out of 15 and Q-Tip wrote all of those lyrics.”

But it's important to remember that A Tribe Called Quest kicked things off with a classic. From their very first album, it was clear that these guys were. album-makers of the highest order. The world may not have fully known Q-Tip's production talents, but they wouldn't stay asleep for much longer. On Peoples' Instinctive Travels And the Paths Of Rhythm, Tribe is still young, weird and fun. They would tone down some of their quirks by the time of their uber-classic followup The Low End Theory, but don't ever view their first album as merely a stepping stone. This album is a testament to teenage creativity, and it opened the floodgates for possibilities.