Can I Kick It?
A Tribe Called Quest built one of golden-age hip hop's most beloved hooks on Lou Reed's bassline -- and then, in a sample-clearance deal almost as famous as the song itself, gave Reed every dollar it ever made.
By Song Reviews · November 5, 2026
Greatest of All Time!A Tribe Called Quest built one of golden-age hip hop's most beloved hooks on Lou Reed's bassline -- and then, in a sample-clearance deal almost as famous as the song itself, gave Reed every dollar it ever made.
“Can I Kick It?” is built around one of the most recognizable basslines ever lifted for a hip hop record: Herbie Flowers’ sliding bass line from Lou Reed’s 1972 “Walk on the Wild Side,” looped underneath Q-Tip and Phife Dawg trading loose, unhurried verses about little or nothing in particular. That looseness is the entire point – the Native Tongues collective A Tribe Called Quest helped define was built on the idea that hip hop could be warm and exploratory rather than combative, and “Can I Kick It?” is still the clearest single example of that philosophy on record, three decades on.
The clearance story behind the sample has become almost as well known as the song. Jive Records couldn’t get the “Walk on the Wild Side” sample cleared on normal terms, and rather than refusing outright, Reed set his own: the group could use the bassline, but he would collect all the royalties and publishing on it. Phife Dawg confirmed the deal plainly years later – Tribe never saw a dime from one of their signature hits, because the bass part underneath it belonged entirely to someone else, by his own terms. It’s a strange footnote for a song this beloved: one of the genre’s warmest, most purely enjoyable records, and the artists who made it got paid nothing for the foundation it was built on.
That financial arrangement doesn’t change what’s actually on the record, which is a masterclass in sampling as composition rather than theft – taking someone else’s groove and finding a completely different song inside it, jazz-rap’s whole ethos distilled into one chorus. Released on 1990’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, it set a template for a specific kind of hip hop warmth that the group, and the wider Native Tongues scene, would spend the next several years refining.
Greatest of All Time. A song built on a bassline its creators never got paid for, and still one of the most purely likable records hip hop’s golden age produced.
Hero image: A Tribe Called Quest, press photo. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.