GFF 2012: Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest

Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest brings the story behind the titular rap group, featuring Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi White, to the big screen. Taking its title from the band's fourth album, Michael Rapaport's film traces their meteoric rise to fame at the forefront of New York's Native Tongues movement.

The band return to their former hang-outs, illustrating the emergent hip-hop scene of the late 80s and early 90s. In its best moments, the documentary is a Behind the Music style mash-up of interviews and music video footage, but digs deeper into the psyches of its subjects. Quest's chilled out sounds soon clash with latter day artistic differences, these disagreements and the strains of Phife's diabetes cause a rift between band members. Beats, Rhymes and Life gets caught up in its own life-based dramas but redeems itself with consistently engaging characters and a reminder of what fine jams Tribe produced. [Nicola Balkind]