We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service

by A Tribe Called Quest

Overview

It seemed like the story of A Tribe Called Quest ended with the sad passing of original member Phife in early 2016. It began with their glory days as one of hip-hop's greatest acts to years of sometimes bitter estrangement, then hit a high point with the group coming together in 2015 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their debut album People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm. They had a surprise up their sleeve, though. On the night they performed on The Tonight Show, the four original members of the Tribe decided the time was right to hit the studio and make a new album. Repairing relationships was the first step and once that happened, the group (minus Ali Shaheed Muhammad, who was in Los Angeles working on the music to Luke Cage) holed up in Q-Tip's home studio and started working on their comeback, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service. Q-Tip held down the producer's chair with a mad scientist's flair, searching near and far through his record collection for inspiration. Tip, Phife, and Jarobi brought rhymes that sounded like they'd been sealed up since the early '90s, then broken open and served fresh. Old collaborators Busta Rhymes and Consequence dropped by to add their skills and energy; new artists like Kendrick Lamar and Anderson Paak, who grew up on the Tribe, dropped by to add verses, and some big names like Andre 3000 and Kanye West jumped in feet first, especially Andre, whose rapid-fire verses with Q-Tip on "Kids" provide one of the record's highlights. Jack White adds some of his guitar heroics on a few tracks and Elton John makes a cameo as well, singing the hook of the very odd "Solid Wall of Sound." The sheer number of guests, the long wait since their last album, the shifting tides of hip hop -- all these factors could have led to We Got It being a disappointment. Amazingly, it turns out to be almost the exact opposite. Thanks to Q-Tip's visionary and pleasingly weird production, which draws from golden age hip-hop, old-school jazz, odd samples, dub reggae, and interplanetary electro, the fact the neither he nor Phife have lost even a small percentage of a step, and the seamlessly integrated contributions from the guests (especially Paak on "Moving Backwards"), the album is vibrant, intense, and alive. The group sound like they're having a blast on party songs like "The Donald" or the buoyant "Dis Generation," get mad as hell on tracks like "Space Program" and "We the People," and generally come off like they're still the greatest. This is no nostalgia trip or callous comeback. It's a giant exclamation point on the end of a brilliant career. It's also a tribute to the everyman genius of Phife, a widescreen look at the record-making skills of Q-Tip, and most importantly, it's a pure, undiluted, joyous thrill to have the Tribe back and still sounding this vital. ~ Tim Sendra

Product Details

Release Date:	11/18/2016
Label:	Epic
UPC:	0889853778720

Tracks

1. The Space Program
2. We the People....
3. Whateva Will Be
4. Solid Wall of Sound
5. Dis Generation
6. Kids...
7. Melatonin
8. Enough!!
9. Mobius
10. Black Spasmodic
11. The Killing Season
12. Lost Somebody
13. Movin Backwards
14. Conrad Tokyo
15. Ego
16. The Donald

Album Credits

Performance Credits

A Tribe Called Quest   Primary Artist
Q-Tip   Vocals,Bass,Drums,Keyboards
Anderson .Paak   Vocals
Blair Wells   Guitar
Jack White   Guitar,Vocals,Guitar (Acoustic)
Casey Benjamin   Organ,Piano,Keyboards,Fender Rhodes
Phife   Vocals
Mark Colenburg   Drums
Kanye West   Vocals
Michael Karoli   Vocals
Busta Rhymes   Vocals
Consequence   Vocals
Elton John   Piano,Vocals
Jarobi White   Vocals
Chris Sholar   Guitar,Guitar (Acoustic)
Katia Cadet   Vocals
Chris Parks   Guitar
Louis Cato   Bass,Guitar
George Spivey   Scratching
Thaddaeus "Terry" Tribbett   Bass
Masayuki Hirano   Piano,Keyboards,Synthesizer
Kendrick Duckworth   Vocals
Brandon Anderson   Vocals
Andre Lauren Benjamin   Vocals
Talib Kweli Greene   Vocals
Chris Bower   Piano

Technical Credits

Tony Iommi   Composer
Blair Wells   Mixing,Engineer,Producer
Bill Ward   Composer
Kerry Minnear   Composer
Holger Czukay   Composer
Irmin Schmidt   Composer
Jackie Mittoo   Composer
Jack White   Composer
Jaki Liebezeit   Composer
Geezer Butler   Composer
Phil Shulman   Composer
Robert Lyn   Composer
Robert Kirby   Assistant Engineer
Q-Tip   Mixing,Engineer,Producer,Drum Programming
Ozzy Osbourne   Composer
Michael Karoli   Composer
Marsha Ambrosius   Composer
A Tribe Called Quest   Executive Producer
Kamaal Fareed   Composer
"Deadly" Headley Bennett   Composer
Damo Suzuki   Composer
Malik Taylor   Composer
Derek Shulman   Composer
Vlado Meller   Mastering
Michael Ostin   A&R
Raymond Shulman   Composer
Jarobi White   Composer
Fitzroy Simpson   Composer
Lloyd Ferguson   Composer
Kim Lumpkin   A&R
Anita Marisa Boriboon   Design,Packaging,Art Direction,Creative Director
Richard Prince   Cover Design
Winston Jones   Composer
Louis Cato   Composer
Tracey Waples   Production Consultant
Laura Gonzalez   Assistant Engineer
Huford Brown   Composer
Jeremy Lubsey   Mastering Assistant
Masayuki Hirano   Composer
Leroy Sibblis   Composer
Gloria Kaba   Assistant Engineer
Michael Starita   Vocal Engineer
Kendrick Duckworth   Composer
Dexter Mills   Composer
Brandon Anderson   Composer
Andre Lauren Benjamin   Composer
Bekah Connolly   A&R
Thom Skarzynski   Product Manager
Trevor Smith   Composer
Anderson .Paak   Composer
Talib Kweli Greene   Composer
Abbey Smith   Vocal Producer