On Friday, November 11, A Tribe Called Quest will release its first album in 18 years since 1998. The album features posthumous contributions from band member, Phife Dawg (Malik Taylor), who died in March several months prior to the album’s release.
Their final album, We Got It From Here….Thank You 4 Your Service will feature many guest appearances such as Andre 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Busta Rhymes, Consequence, Jack White, Elton John, Anderson Paak and Talib Kweli.
On Wednesday night, Q-Tip and Jarobi White held a listening party at MoMA PS1 in Queens for the group’s forthcoming album We Got It From Here……Thank You 4 Your Service.
The album’s title was chosen by Phife Dawg, and although the other members did not understand its meaning, they kept it in place after his death.
Due to a schedule conflict ATCQ’s rapper/producer Ali Shaheed was absent but many hip hop artists like Consequence, Busta Rhymes, DJ Scratch, Steel from Smif n Wessun and famous writer/journalist Amy Linden came to the party. Music was provided by DJ Sammy B of Jungle Brothers and the night ended with D.J. sets from Prince Paul and Questlove.
During a later Q&A, Q-Tip, Jarobi, Busta and Consequence spoke how this album came about. Tip explained working on the album in his studio, the members of the group quickly regained some of their old chemistry. “The drapings of ageism and questions of where we’re at, that shit flew out the fucking window,” Tip said. “We fell into science mode. We just locked in. We became fucking kids again!”
Accordng to Busta, the initial conversations about We Got It From Here….took place 2015, the day after Tribe’s performance on the Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, when the group was celebrating the 25th anniversary party of People’s Instinctive Travels at New York’s Santos Party House. “We just started to talk about how the [new] album needed to happen officially,” Busta remembered. “That was the first time that Q-Tip said, ‘Alright, I’m with it.’ I thought he was bullshitting. I didn’t think it was really gonna happen. I thought he was just in the moment, the whole anniversary celebration. The next day, he still said he was with it. Then I really knew: This shit is gonna pop.”
“We spoke about it at length, [Phife] and I, about the importance of maintaining the essence [of A Tribe Called Quest] but not getting trapped in that and trying to see it beyond,” Q-Tip said. “We would just listen to shit we liked —’Bohemian Rhapsody’ by Queen, and then we would listen to ‘Money Trees’ by Kendrick, then we’d go to Rakim. It was a sonic exercise to hear all those different records and see the common thread.”
“Nobody don’t sit in a room and write with each other no more,” Busta declared. “Everybody just send their little ProTools to each other, and you get the verse back in an email. When you write your verse, and you look at your man that’s in the room with you, and he’s reacting to his own bars that he’s impressing himself with? You wanna go over there and hear what he’s got to say. “That was exactly what we did when we wrote ‘Scenario.'”
This weekend, Tribe will perform for the first time ever on “Saturday Night Live,” making their debut alongside host Dave Chappelle, who will also be taking the S.N.L. stage for the first time in his lengthy career.
“Make sure you watch S.N.L.,” Tip said.
We Got it From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service
Album Track List
| 1. | “The Space Program” | 5:40 | |
| 2. | “We The People” | 2:52 | |
| 3. | “Whateva Will Be” | 2:52 | |
| 4. | “Solid Wall of Sound” | 3:43 | |
| 5. | “Dis Generation” (featuring Busta Rhymes) | 3:33 | |
| 6. | “Kids…” (featuring André 3000) | 3:48 | |
| 7. | “Melatonin” | 4:44 | |
| 8. | “Enough!!” | 3:20 | |
| 9. | “Mobius” | 2:51 | |
| 10. | “Black Spasmodic” | 3:03 | |
| 11. | “The Killing Season” | 2:43 | |
| 12. | “Lost Somebody” | 4:18 | |
| 13. | “Movin Backwards” (featuring Anderson .Paak) | 4:41 | |
| 14. | “Conrad Tokyo” (featuring Kendrick Lamar) | 3:31 | |
| 15. | “Ego” | 3:17 | |
| 16. | “The Donald” | 5:22 |
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