The tip-off to all of a Tribe Called Quest's considerable talent was the grainy, mischievous curl in rapper Q-Tip's voice: Tribe were abstract imps who always made you chuckle along with their surrealist bonhomie as much as gasp at their skills. This collection of hits and just-misses sensitively plots the flash points of their run, mixing tracks such as "Scenario," the ultimate posse cut, with the previously unreleased "Mr. Incognito," a whimsical, sticky-soled Lugz stomp through a thicket of snares and cartoon whistles. The hits haven't aged: With its ripple of vibes and glimmers of seagull guitar, "Electric Relaxation" is still so sexy and downbeat it could make a Borg melt.

Tribe did more than fuse hip-hop with jazz — in the way their voices weaved into their beats and around their deeply chilled islands of jeep funk, their hip-hop was itself a kind of jazz. They also kept it hilariously real: On the lesser-known track "Peace, Prosperity and Paper," Q-Tip comes clean about his financial aspirations by declaring that, as to money, "I want the mass amount/That the Sesame Street Dracula can't count."

“Oh Sherrie”

Steve Perry's girlfriend Sherrie Swafford was actually in the studio when Perry began writing this song--his lone Top Ten hit as a solo act--with two co-writers. The trio began at midnight one night with just "Oh, Sherrie!" and "hold on, hold on." Three hours later, they had a complete song. Swafford, however, had to wait until the next day to hear it. "Sherrie actually got tired and went to bed," Perry said. She also appeared in the video, but their relationship did not hold on for long.