Footprints - A Tribe Called Quest

         Walk home!

         That hasn't been the first time I have heard that. Anyways, the song doesn't actually have much to do with footprints. However, that isn't what matters. Q-Tip takes the show on this one, definitely an impressive rap performance on this track. The beat lures you in with the brass and then changes it up, with the occasional sound of marching, which is so very appropriate.
          Q-Tip has many clever lines on this track, and some that promote different ideas. Some more difficult to analyze than other, and when you wanna just take a break from that you most certainly can. Some things that stuck out at me in the lyrics:

If you're a megastar, worth will buy you a car

I'd rather go barefootin, for prints I will be puttin

all over the earth if we can get there first

Now that we are in it, footprints are bein printed

So fi you recognise em, you can try to size em

They'll probably be the ones with the size not fryin

Boy you can feel the realness in those lines. The comparison made between your "barefootin'" and driving is effort. Is much harder walking, but the point he makes is that the Tribe's footprints: great works, achievements, will be left behind and remembered. Where the megastar will simply not have something to be proud of, and won't have much to look back on. Definitely a message to all fake artists. 

Catch the track, track by track, get a map to track a trail

You will find yourself behind for a map does not prevail

See the levels peakin as the rhythms keep-a screechin

A Quest, oh yes a Quest, inside the jam I will keep preachin

the point, oh yes the point, because it's close but yet so far

The loudiness is ringin as we scoot across the star

We are bulgin, I'm indulgin in a rat-a-tat-tat

Those lines are just awesome! Such a strong flow from one of the best.

A chair is not a chair, a house is not a home

This line was particularly interesting. Now the chair part certainly got me stuck. But to say a house is not a home is a very special line actually. A house, is a physical structure, one you live in. However, while a house can be a home, that isn't always the case. A home contains value, whether certain memories or just somewhere that feels like home. Taking another stab at materialism and realness, Q-Tip tells us being rich isn't everything to life, always hold on to the true stuff that really makes life a wonderful experience.

             As for the beat man it is groovy, man that word just sounds weird to me. Anyways, they put a variety of drums in, and a few synths I think I can separate from the rest of the beat. And that nice brass piece with the marching felt quite real at the start, and between verses. Also that voice during the breaks is also quite interesting. The Tribe did there thing on this track!

• "Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder (from the 1976 album Songs in the Key of Life)
• "Think Twice" by Donald Byrd (from the 1975 album "Stepping into Tomorrow")
• "Walk Tall" by Cannonball Adderley (from the 1969 album "Country Preacher")