A Tribe Called Quest laid down a marker as one of the more original and eclectic voices in hip-hop with 1990 single Bonita Applebaum.

What I love most about Bonita Applebaum is that it’s musically a hybrid of reggae, jazz and hip-hop – and even a sitar sample. Before it became a hip hop classic, the song began life as one of A Tribe Called Quest’s first demos.

The group started out in Queens in 1988 as part of a collective called Native Tongues, with Jungle Brothers and De La Soul, Queen Latifah and Monie Love.

The final version, released in 1990, uses a plethora of samples – including Little Feat, I now discover – and in turn is sampled and referenced in numerous other hip hop tracks by artists from The Fugees to P.M. Dawn, Biz Markie to Lil Wayne.

It was the second single from Quest’s second album, People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm, created by Q-Tip while still a 16-year-old schoolboy.

A popular “Why remix” was made which heavily sampled Carly Simon’s song Why, and another “Hootie Mix” that samples the Isley Brothers song Between The Sheets