A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
A TRIBE CALLED QUEST:
Q-TIP
PHIFE DAWG
ALI SHAHEED MUHAMMAD
JAROBI WHITE
Executive Producers A Tribe Called Quest
Released November 11, 2016
The nature of the surprise album release is becoming so commonplace that surprise releases are now rapidly becoming fully anticipated, therefore, negating the very concept of being surprised. But, even now, with all of the prefabricated hoopla there is still ample room and space to be legitimately surprised and at this time, I am thrilled to take time to celebrate the release that unquestionably surprised me profoundly in 2016, an album release so deeply unexpected as it arrived from a band and journey long thought to be firmly concluded. Ladies and gentlemen, after 18 years, we are now graced with the latest and final album release from the iconic hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest and without question, this poignant, urgent release is one of the very finest albums of the year.
By this time, the story behind the creation of the album that was supposedly never meant to be is widely known. But, just in case you are unaware, here is the shorthand version. Despite occasional live performances, the grouping of A Tribe Called Quest was essentially non-existent due to those pesky internal tensions and the fractured friendship between the velvet voiced, esoteric Q-Tip and the more streetwise, self-described "funky diabetic"/"5 ft. assassin" Phife Dawg--especially as chronicled in Michael Rappaport's brilliant documentary film "Beats, Rhymes And Life: The Travels Of A Tribe Called Quest" (2011).
Yet, the evening of November 13, 2015 proved itself to be a night of celebration as well as one of newfound purpose. To commemorate the 25th anniversary and reissue of their landmark debut album "People's Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm" (released April 17, 1990), A Tribe Called Quest reunited for an explosively enthusiastic performance on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon," a night that coincidentally also saw the horrific Paris attacks at Le Bataclan.
Feeling re-inspired and creatively renewed, it was decided to return and regroup for one more studio effort, an experience fully created in secret which saw not only the complete return of the prodigal Tribe member Jarobi White (who departed the music business to become a chef) to the fold, but the friendship between Q-Tip and Phife Dawg fully repaired.
Sadly, long before the album's completion, tragedy occurred when Phife Dawg, aged only 45 years old, lost his battle with diabetes and passed away on March 22, 2016, a devastation the only gave the band an even more urgent purpose to finish what had been started in full honor of their fallen friend and band member.
With the Phife adorned album title "We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service," A Tribe Called Quest have emerged with a release that not only and completely fulfills the promise of their classic first three albums, which includes the game changing "The Low End Theory" (released September 24, 1991) and "Midnight Marauders" (released November 9, 1993) it is an album on which the group has never sounded more compelling, vibrant and powerfully charged and even emboldened as they hold up a mirror to themselves, their friendships, partnerships, legacy and on-going vitality plus the state of the nation in which we all reside. Trust me dear listeners, "We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service" is ESSENTIAL listening as our most turbulent year of 2016 begins to draw to a close.
Opening with a sample from Gilbert Moses' Blaxploitation film "Willie Dynamite" (1974) and featuring production that sounds like an updated version of Public Enemy's iconic and battle ready production team known as the Bomb Squad, "We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service" begins with the sonic one-two body slam of "The Space Program" and "We The People..."
With their trademark jazz inflected swing, Q-Tip and Phife Dawg begin "The Space Program" with the joined forced of their voices, calling for unity and at a pace that shows an unprecedented velocity.
"It's time to go left and not right
Gotta get it together forever
Gotta get it together for brothers
Gotta get it together for sisters
For mothers and fathers and dead niggas
For non-conformists and one-hitter quitters
For Tyson types and Che figures
Let's get it together, come on, let's make it
Gotta make it to make it, to make it, to make it, to make it
To make something happen, to make something happen..."
Yet, the call for solidarity and self-reliance, this time primarily among and within the Black community, Jarobi White marks his full return to the mic with pure ferocity and lyrical dexterity as he somehow weaves the reality of society's "Mass un-blackening" to chilling yet blood boiling effect. Extolling with bluntness about how we are being left behind due to re-gentrification, within our cities and communities to potentially even the furthest reaches of space ("They're taking off to Mars, got the space vessels overflowing/What, you think they want us there? All us niggas not going")--all the while providing an allegory to how Black people are systematically and continuously getting pushed out of the frames of existence. As Q-Tip plainly states: "Imagine for one second all the people in poverty/No matter the skin tone, culture or time zone/Think the ones who got it would even think to throw you a bone?/Moved you out your neighborhood Did they find you a home?"
"The Space Program" takes the news that is most distressing and turns the tables to make the words sound as an ALARM, therefore making music for a full resistance to those who wish to extinguish a people. The musical call to arms continues on a more massive scale on the booming air raid siren drenched "We The People...", during which Q-Tip croons the realities of a Trump administration that had yet to come to full reality but was pre-figured during his openly xenophobic campaign and violent, Third Reich styled rallies...
"All you Black folks, you must go
All you Mexicans, you must go
And all you poor folks, you must go
Muslims and gays, boy we hate your ways
So, all you bad folks, you must go"
With that one chorus A Tribe Called Quest powerfully brings to light a rising evil we, as a society could easily recognize, if not for the fake news, false narratives and even that "VH1 show that you can waste your time with."
Just two songs into the album, I questioned if ATCQ could possibly keep up this relentless momentum. The answer was revealed with the soulful yet purposeful hip-swaying swagger of "Whateva Will Be," on which Phife, Jarobi, Q-Tip and guest rapper/auxiliary Tribe member Consequence effortlessly trade verses as if caught within a sidewalk conversation about the societal ills against the Black Community and the need for perseverance.
The Elton John assisted "Solid Walls Of Sound" (yes, "Bennie And The Jets" still reverberates largely within the Black community) provides a slight respite from the socio-politics of the proceedings as Busta Rhymes joins the group congealing richly with Phife Dawg's Jamaican lilt. Where the slick jazz guitar driven "Dis Generation" showcases love for the next generation of conscious rappers, the Andre 3000 assisted "Kids..." warns of the fantasy driven industry that has claimed and spit out more hopefuls than one can properly count. The eerie "Melatonin" chronicles the abusive self-medication utilized as an escape from 21st century pressures and realities. "So many thoughts in my mind, making it very hard to unwind/I guess I should take one, just one... " sings guest vocalist Abbey Smith. And after this level of equal parts fun and turbulence, the beat slows down just a tad for the sex fueled slow jam of "Enough!!!" which details the pleasures and pressures of 21st century relationships.
After the hard charging yet minimalist grooves of "Mobius," and the reggae dancehall inflected "Black Spasmodic"the album returns to matters of the utmost seriousness within "The Killing Season," featuring guests Talib Kweli and Kanye West alongside Consequence and Jarobi. Tapping directly into the rightful paranoia of the Black community within a society that has clearly declared open season upon us, Kweli deftly paints the sobering picture...
"It's war and we fighting for inches and millimeters
They try to stall the progress by killing off all the leaders
If we don't give them martyrs no more, they can't defeat us
This lack of justice got us disgusted, look at our faces
All these soldiers hate but I saw military training
The force flags fly at half mast this morning
Take a bow, this might be your last performance"
From the social to the deeply intimate and personal, "Lost Somebody" allows the album to serve as a eulogy for Phife Dawg as Q-Tip and Jarobi trade verses for their fallen comrade in travel and the paths of rhythm. Q-Tip utilizes his section for history as well as an open hearted apology as he expresses the following:
"Malik, I would treat you like little brother, that would give you fits
Sometimes overbearing, though I thought it was for your benefit
Despite all the spats and shits cinematically documented
The one thing I appreciate, you and I, we never pretended
Rhymes, we would write it out, hard times fight it out
Gave grace face to face, made it right
And now you riding out, out, out,out...damn"
And Jarobi takes the mic also keeping his section just as emotionally naked.
"Never thought I would be ever writing this song
Hold friends tight, never know when those people are gone
So, so beautiful, opined indisputable
Heart of the largest lion trapped inside the little dude..."
Through keyboard arpeggios, skittering programmed drums and guest vocalist Katia Cadet's consoling words of "No more crying/He's in sunshine/He's alright now/ See his wings?" A Tribe Called Quest's memorial is tremendously moving without ever growing self-consciously maudlin.
Under Chris Sholar's rough funk guitar work and a stellar guest appearance from Anderson.Park, "Movin' Backwards" details the struggles of trying to move forwards within a world that consistently places obstacles fully designed to impede any sense of progress. Phfe Dawg returns to the mic, as if fully resurrected, on the brooding street funk of "Conrad Tokyo." a track that also features the peerless wordplay and delivery of Kendrick Lamar as well as guitar work from Jack White. Again, for music that was written and recorded some time in the recent past, Phife's lyrics are up to the second with its impatience and intolerance for a world that insists upon normalizing what is simply not normal.
"Rather watch the Nixon shit than politicians politic
CNN and all this shit, gwaan yo, move with the fuckery
Trump and the SNL hilarity
Troublesome times kid, no time for comedy..."
The shades of the album delve even deeper into the darkness as Q-Tip, again assisted by Jack White's growling guitars, explores the myriad corridors of the human "Ego." Finally, the album draws to a triumphant close with the nearly Funkadelic vibed "The Donald," not an endorsement of Trump by any means but yet a final tribute to Phife Dawg who often nicknamed himself "Don Juice," a figure of whom there was no equal.
Amen!
A Tribe Called Quest's "We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service" is an album experience of unrepentantly sincere and passionate imperativeness. It is a work that sounds as if the group could see each and every grain of sand falling through the hourglass and are all attempting to beat it to the finish. Quite fittingly, it is an album of mortality, impending and realized, as the work forecasts all of the energies devised to bringing about the termination of the African-American community and its citizens plus of course, the saddening and untimely loss of one of A Tribe Called Quest's founders and hip-hop's most innovative rappers/lyricists.
The death of Malik Taylor a.k.a. Phife Dawg is weaved into the fabric of album, much like David Bowie's "Blackstar" (released January 8, 2016), through eulogies, tributes, the title and even the album's final two words bear his name. Yet, it is not a morbid affair as he often seems to be wholly resurrected through the vibrancy of his lyrics, the effortless flow, flash, grit and grace of his delivery and even when he arrives upon the album, even after he is memorialized on "Lost Somebody." The labor of love from his bandmates and compatriots is palpable, especially considering that Q-Tip handles the lion's share of the instrumentation and production and aside from Kanye West's lyrical hook on "The Killing Season," all of the album's participants collaborated and recorded at the same time in the same studio space, giving tremendous energy to each and every selection.
Combating against the elegiac nature is a forcefully political urgency that as far as ATCQ albums are concerned are unprecedented in their directness, and how could they not be considering the time in which we all live. Honestly, just looking at the song titles by themselves, the album feels like a series of news headlines to the nation at large fully describing not only our history but where we are rapidly heading, and now under a Trump presidency. Much as with the passing of Phife Dawg and its effects upon his friends, bandmates, family and fans, the current political landscape of the United States Of America carries a similar weight and grief from which we can all crumble or stand together and continuously...push it along!
This album may serve as the final recorded work from A tribe Called Quest but they have created a statement, while final, is not finite, for the lyrics, music and memories of the man himself in Phife Dawg will hopefully reverberate through time and space, providing a legacy that is everlasting. Much as how we as a people-African-American people and even humanity itself--must use our words and actions to aid and inspire with the promise to uplift and unite against intolerance and hatred, the collection of our deeds today, reverberating through time,
A Tribe Called Quest's "We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service" is an album is reunion and renewal, resistance and revolution, life and death and infinity and all over again, exquisitely delivering the outstanding soundtrack to our collective paths of rhythm.
Malik Taylor a.k.a. Phife Dawg REST IN POWER!!!
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