Exactly ten years ago today, on November 11, 2016, A Tribe Called Quest released We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, their sixth and final studio album, on Epic Records. The record arrived eighteen years after their previous album, 1998’s The Love Movement, and it closed the book on one of hip-hop’s most influential groups with a statement that felt both urgent and elegiac.
The reunion that made the album possible began on television. On November 13, 2015, the group performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of their debut, People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, playing their classic “Can I Kick It?” The appearance reminded the four members — Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Jarobi White — how much unfinished business they still had, and they soon began recording together again.
Most of the album was made over nearly a year at Q-Tip’s home studio, the AbLab, in New Jersey. The sessions took a devastating turn when Phife Dawg, born Malik Taylor, died on March 22, 2016, at the age of 45 from complications of diabetes, before the album was finished. Phife had chosen the album’s title, and the group kept it in his honor, completing the record as a tribute to their fallen bandmate. His verses throughout the album carry an extra weight because of that loss, and his presence is felt on nearly every track.
The album is packed with guests who underline Tribe’s reach across generations and genres, including Kendrick Lamar, André 3000, Elton John, Jack White, Busta Rhymes, Anderson .Paak, Kanye West, Talib Kweli and Consequence. Standout tracks include the pointed opener “We the People….,” the cosmic “The Space Program,” the Elton John-assisted “Solid Wall of Sound” and the joyful “Dis Generation.”
Commercially and critically, the album was a triumph. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 135,000 equivalent album units in its first week, giving Tribe their first chart-topper since 1996’s Beats, Rhymes and Life — the longest gap between No. 1 albums in hip-hop history. Critics at Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, which awarded it a 9.0, The Guardian and The New York Times all praised it, even though the album was surprisingly shut out of the Grammy nominations. Days after the 2016 election, the group performed on Saturday Night Live beneath a banner honoring Phife, turning a late-night appearance into a moment of mourning and defiance.
A decade on, We Got It from Here… stands as a rare kind of farewell: a final album that added to a legacy rather than diminishing it, and a reminder of everything A Tribe Called Quest meant to hip-hop.
Sources: Blackout Hip Hop 10-year retrospective | Wikipedia: We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service | The Culture Crypt album guide
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