Veteran rapper and record producer Q-Tip presented the Dr Dre Global Impact Award to fellow artist Pharrell Williams at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California, on February 1.During his speech, Williams, 52, spoke about his career montage before thanking Q-Tip for his musical influence and cultural impact.“It’s always awkward for me to sit through these montages. I don’t know how… some of y’all feel, but it’s listening to your own voicemail over a loudspeaker… Q-Tip is someone that I’ve looked up to since the very beginning… There’s no one like you, and I call you teacher every day,” Pharrell noted.Q-Tip, formerly of the alternative hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest, is now the host of Apple Music 1’s radio show, Abstract Radio. The 55-year-old is also the Artistic Director of Hip-Hop Culture at the Kennedy Center.At this year’s Grammys, the Amplified hitmaker gave a shoutout to Pharrell Williams and called him an “alien.” He also paid a heartfelt tribute to D’Angelo.Exploring Q-Tip in recent yearsQ-Tip was born Jonathan William Davis in Manhattan, New York City, in April 1970. He later converted to Islam in the mid-1990s and took the name Kamaaal Ibn John Fareed.His childhood friend and member of the Jungle Brothers trio, Afrika Baby Bam, aka Nathaniel Hall, gave him the nickname Q-Tip when they were in high school, which later became his stage name.Over the years, Davis, who’s also nicknamed The Abstract, has worked as a solo recording artist, music producer, DJ, actor, film producer, advocate, curator, and hip-hop ambassador.A Tribe Called Quest, which he co-founded in 1985, released their final studio album, We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, in November 2016, before disbanding the following year after their last stage performance at Bestival in England. The critically acclaimed album and the group’s end came in the wake of the death of its member and rapper Phife Dawg.The group briefly reunited in 2018 to film the music video for the album’s opening track, The Space Program.Since then, he has been serving in multiple roles, including as the host of Abstract Radio, the inaugural Artistic Director of Hip Hop at the Kennedy Centre, and as a teacher at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, where he helps students explore the connection between jazz and hip-hop.As an actor, The Abstract made a cameo as himself in the fifth episode of the 2022 Apple TV+ comedy-drama miniseries, WeCrashed, starring Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway.Elsewhere, he has collaborated with various artists. For instance, Davis produced LL Cool J’s 2024 album, The FORCE. Before that, he was featured on Jack White’s 2022 single Hi-De-Ho and Gang Starr’s 2019 track, Hit Man.The Abstract also executive-produced Danny Brown’s October 2019 album, U Know What I’m Sayin'? while working on his three solo projects, The Last Zulu, AlGoRhythms, and Riotdiaries.Q-Tip performed the chorus of two singles, Eminem’s Yah Yah in 2020 and Cordae’s More Life in 2021. He last worked on De La Soul’s November 2025 single, Day in the Sun, as a feature artist alongside Yummy Bingham.During a late 2018 interview with NME, Jonathan William Davis said he would never retire from music and would do it until his death.