For thousands of years, the bards and balladeers borrowed and built from art gone before. Then someone invented music publishing. If you wanted to stand on the shoulders of giants now, it was going to cost you. Sometimes everything.

For rap music, the 1980s mirrored rock and roll in the 1950s — the genre established itself, it exploded, but it didn’t veer too wildly from the established sound. Then the 90s came around, and just like rock in the 60s, rap and hip-hop blossomed, stretching out, exploring, coloring outside the lines like excited kids discovering the 64-color box of Crayolas after years of only using the 8-color box. A Tribe Called Quest helped to push those boundaries.

A Tribe Called Quest coalesced in the mid-to-late 80s with childhood friends Q-Tip and Phife Dawg at the core. They joined a collective of hip-hop artists known as Native Tongues who emphasized positivity and cut-up creativity, and made appearances on songs and remixes by other artists, but by 1989 had their own deal with Geffen Records and began recording their debut.

Rap has always (for the most part) been built on samples, and as the 90s dawned producers and songwriters started drawing from every song they’d ever heard, regardless of genre — if it had a killer hook, a sick breakbeat, even just one great yelp, it was thrown into the kaleidoscope of sound. For “Can I Kick It?,” A Tribe Called Quest chose their primary sample wisely. Artistically speaking, anyway.

Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” features one of the most iconic hooks ever written, a deceptively simple-sounding bass lick played by sessionist supreme, Herbie Flowers, and A Tribe Called Quest built their laidback groove around it. They certainly didn’t limit themselves by genre — the song also contains samples of “What a Waste” by Ian Dury and the Blockheads (reggae fusion?), “Spinning Wheel” by Dr. Lonnie Smith (jazz), “Dance of the Knights” by Sergei Prokofiev (classical), and “Sunshower” by Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band (big band disco). That’s some extreme coloring!

Released as a single in the fall of 1990, “Can I Kick It?” legged its way to #8 on the US rap chart, but was perhaps too alternative to score on the mainstream pop chart; however, it did prove to be the group’s biggest ever hit in the UK. Unfortunately, the group never received any money since all the royalties went to Lou Reed — for a lick he didn’t even write. But that’s the way the crayon crumbles.

So wipe your feet really good on the rhythm rug …. with A Tribe Called Quest.