A Tribe Called Quest’s frontman and producer Q-Tip called the group's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nomination a bittersweet moment in a recent interview with Billboard.

“I was pleased but I wish my man Phife Dawg was here” said Tip of his partner Phife who passed in March of 2016 at the age of 45. Tip also spoke on the recent Hip-Hop nominations and inductions into the Rock Hall.

“To try to summarize, I guess you could say there’s a lot of people in this country who think that Rock & Roll looks a certain way. The synonymous instrument with rock is the guitar, and the face of rock & roll is a White male face. As innovation goes on, one of the ideas of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is to praise innovation. We have to remember Hip-Hop artists are getting inducted because we are for the most part, out of the synergy of what [Rock & Roll] was and that’s daring, against the grain, informal, innovative and influential."

Speaking on the origins of Rock music and Black Americans, Tip said “With any innovation, you have mutations like splinters – but it starts with the root and the root of Rock & Roll was Black faces. The synonymous instrument was the Blues voice and the face of it was Black.” He continued: “The thing about Tribe is that we played in front of more Rock audiences than Rap. Just being on tour with Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Green Day and the Beastie Boys. Our first show we opened for Big Audio Dynamite. At the time we kinda helped bring white audiences to Hip Hop.”