Today, April 10, is the 48th birthday of A Tribe Called Quest member and Queens-bred rapper, Q-Tip.

Q-Tip first burst onto the scene as a standout member of the acclaimed rap group A Tribe Called Quest in 1985. After the group split in 1998, Tip pursued a solo career achieving much success. He dropped his solo debut album, Amplified, in 1999, but didn't follow up with a sophomore LP until nine years later with 2008's The Renaissance and then 2009's Kamaal/The Abstract.

The 48-year-old MC is still currently hard at work at his fourth solo album, The Last Zulu, but has made time to collab on mixtapes with Busta Rhymes, partake in hip-hop Twitter feuds, hold weekly DJ sets and organize New York based Ferguson and Black Lives Matter protests. He also stays busy over at Apple Music on Beats 1, where he has a weekly show, Abstract Radio. To this day, Q-Tip is listed as one of the top 50 lyricists of all time.

Following the death of ATCQ member Phife Dawg in 2016, Q-Tip and the remaining Tribe members banded together and dropped one more album as a group in Phife's honor. The album, We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service dropped in November 2016 and automatically shot to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, marking Tribe’s first appearance on the charts in 20 years. In 2017, ATCQ performed their final show at New York's Panorama Festival, deciding to call it quits as a tribute to Phife.

Happy Birthday, Q-Tip!

See 60 Hip-Hop Albums Turning 20 in 2018

More From XXL