Eb minor · Camelot 2A · 99 BPM
Electric Relaxation
by A Tribe Called Quest
- 99
- BPM
- Eb minor
- Key
- 2A
- Camelot
- 87
- Danceability
- 19
- Acousticness
The beat behind "Electric Relaxation" was voted the third greatest hip-hop beat of all time by Rock the Bells in 2024, three decades after the record first appeared. The song itself had arrived in February 1994, released by Jive Records as the second single from A Tribe Called Quest's third album, Midnight Marauders. It peaked at number 65 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and for the first two seasons it opened The WB's black sitcom The Wayans Bros. as its theme.
Q-Tip built the beat in Phife Dawg's grandmother's basement, where she had given him a key to work. Phife recalled coming home from a trip, hearing the music drift up from below, and rushing downstairs without even greeting his grandmother first. Q-Tip told him the beat was crazy, and it later evolved into the finished track. The production sampled "Mystic Brew" by jazz organist Ronnie Foster along with "Outside Love" by Brethren.
The pair wrote their own verses but traded them when recording, each performing lines the other had written. That swap produced the back-and-forth exchange that runs through the track. Josh Taft directed the music video, produced by Edward Rehfeldt, having already handled the clips for "Award Tour" and "Oh My God" from the same album.
Electric Relaxation runs at 99 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.42 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 606 ms. It is in Eb minor, Camelot 2A, which shares its notes with F# major and mixes cleanly with Ab minor and Bb minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.