Born in New York in April 1970, Jonathan Davis is better known as Q-Tip – recording artist, producer and actor. Q-Tip rose to prominence in the late 1980s, as the front man of seminal hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest, alongside Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Phife and – sometimes – Jarobi.
Following the group's split in 1998, Q-Tip released a solo album 'Amplified' in 1999 and nine years later, after two un-released projects, 'The Renaissance' in 2008. Q-Tip has worked with a variety of other artists during his career, including De La Soul, Deee-Lite, Beastie Boys, Busta Rhymes, Janet Jackson, The Chemical Brothers and R.E.M.
Q-Tip also uses the recording monikers The Abstract, The Abstract Poetic and Kamaal The Abstract and in the mid-1990s, after converting to Islam he adopted the muslim name Kamaal John Fareed. But he is still most commonly known as Q-Tip, the alias he began with in A Tribe Called Quest and still records under as a solo artist. If you wondered where this came from, the Q stands for Queens – the borough of New York City from which he hails.
(Biography by Simon Bates)
