Steve Biko

Recorded and mixed at Battery Studios in Midtown Manhattan, New York, with A Tribe Called Quest and Bob Power credited on engineering and mixing. The track features Q-Tip and Phife Dawg and was written by Jonathan Davis, Malik Isaac Taylor, and Ali Shaheed Muhammad. It opened Midnight Marauders, the group’s third studio album, released on November 9, 1993, by Jive Records. The song tied the album’s first full performance statement to South African anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko, placing the record squarely in the socially aware, creatively peak-era Tribe catalog. The track remains one of the defining opening statements of Midnight Marauders, an album still widely treated as a career high point and a foundational alternative hip-hop record. Its title and chant-like hook kept Steve Biko’s name in hip-hop circulation long after release.