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

We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service
Studio album by A Tribe Called Quest
Released	November 11, 2016
Recorded	2015–16
Studio	AbLab in New Jersey[1]
Genre	Jazz rap[2]
Length	60:18
Label	Epic, SME
Producer	A Tribe Called Quest (exec.)[1] Q-Tip[1] Blair Wells[1]
A Tribe Called Quest chronology
The Love Movement (1998) We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service (2016)
Singles from We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service
"We the People...." Released: November 17, 2016[3]

We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service is the sixth studio album by American hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest. It was released on November 11, 2016, by Epic Records. The album features guest appearances from André 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Jack White, Elton John, Kanye West, Anderson Paak, Talib Kweli, and the group's most frequent collaborators Consequence and Busta Rhymes. The album features contributions from member Phife Dawg, who died several months prior to the album's release.^[4][5][6][7]

We got it from Here... received widespread critical acclaim and became A Tribe Called Quest's second album to chart atop the Billboard 200.

Background

After The Love Movement, A Tribe Called Quest split up due to relationship issues between group members, effectively rendering The Love Movement as the supposed final album. For years on out, Tribe denied that any new material was recorded, or even planned, although they reunited briefly to play several shows during Kanye West's Yeezus Tour in 2013. On November 13, 2015, the group performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the same night of the Paris attacks. Feeling "charged", the group put aside their differences, and decided to record the album in secrecy.^[5] Q-Tip has stated it is their last album.^[8]

The album's production is attributed to Q-Tip, with longtime hip-hop engineer Blair Wells given co-producer credit.^[1][9] The group's DJ, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, was unable to co-produce the album with Q-Tip, as he was producing the Luke Cage soundtrack with Adrian Younge at the time;^[10] therefore, his name does not appear in the album's credits.^[1] Scratching credits on the album are instead attributed to DJ Scratch.^[1]

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.^[5]

Release and reception

Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	8.4/10[11]
Metacritic	89/100[12]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[10]
The A.V. Club	B+[13]
Entertainment Weekly	B+[14]
The Guardian	[15]
The Independent	[16]
The Irish Times	[17]
The Observer	[18]
Pitchfork	9/10[19]
Rolling Stone	[20]
Vice	A+[21]

We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service was released by Epic Records on November 11, 2016, to widespread acclaim from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 89, based on 22 reviews.^[12] Ray Rahman from Entertainment Weekly wrote that the record "vividly demonstrates the group's unassailable greatness and continued relevance",^[14] while Christopher R. Weingarten of Rolling Stone believed that "in both delivery and content", A Tribe Called Quest "maintain the attitude of the Bohemian everydude funkonauts that inspired Kanye West, Andre 3000 and Kendrick Lamar (who all appear here)".^[20] Robert Christgau hailed it as a "triumph" in his review for Vice, writing that the record "represents both their bond and the conscious black humanism they felt sure the nation was ready for ... urging us to love each other as much as we can as we achieve a happiness it's our duty to reaccess if we're to battle as all we can be."^[21] In Spin, Brian Josephs praised how the group "worked with the understanding that black music at its finest conversed with ancestry while pointing toward future possibilities in resistance against the racist forces that run parallel."^[22] According to Michael Madden from Consequence of Sound, the album exhibits "the classic Tribe sound: a warm and crisp confluence of East Coast hip-hop, jazz, and more, all mixed and mastered impeccably",^[23] while Clayton Purdom of The A.V. Club believed the music had more in common with Q-Tip's 2008 solo album The Renaissance than with the group's previous work; he called We got it from Here...' "a sinuous sound collage pulling much more from ’90s and ’00s R&B than it does Native Tongues boom-bap".^[13] In The Observer, Kitty Empire wrote that "as the album enters its final third, some focus is lost, but the first two-thirds take no prisoners either lyrically or musically."^[18] It was later named the 28th best album of 2016 by Rolling Stone with their song "The Space Program" ranking at number 30 on their "50 Best Songs of 2016" list.^[24][25]

We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, earning 135,000 album-equivalent units, with 112,000 of that figure being pure album sales.^[26] It became A Tribe Called Quest's second number one album, and their first since 1996, marking the longest time between number one albums for a hip hop act.^[26]

Track listing

All tracks produced by Q-Tip and co-produced by Blair Wells.^[1]

Track notes

• Consequence contributed vocals to "Whateva Will Be", "Mobius", "Black Spasmodic" and "The Killing Season".^[1]
• Busta Rhymes contributed vocals to "Solid Wall of Sound", "Dis Generation", "The Donald" and "Mobius".^[1]
• Jack White played guitar on "Ego", "The Donald" and "Solid Wall of Sound", and contributed vocals to "Solid Wall of Sound".^[1]
• Elton John contributed vocals and played piano on "Solid Wall of Sound".^[1]
• André 3000 contributed vocals to "Kids...".^[1]
• Marsha Ambrosius and Abbey Smith contributed vocals to "Melatonin".^[1]
• Talib Kweli contributed vocals to "The Killing Season"^[1]
• Kanye West contributed vocals to "The Killing Season".^[1]
• Anderson Paak contributed vocals to "Movin Backwards".^[1]
• Kendrick Lamar contributed vocals to "Conrad Tokyo".^[1]
• Katia Cadet contributed vocals to "Lost Somebody" and "The Donald".^[1]

Charts

References

External links

• We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service at Discogs (list of releases)