We Got It From Here ... Thank You 4 Your Service (2016)

I had to cram some attempting to get a bead on this last album from A Tribe Called Quest—the last because one of the three principals, Phife Dog, died before its release. It was also their first in 18 years. There is a whole VH1 story here—heyday in the early '90s, followed by bitterness, solo albums, public callouts on the solo albums, etc., until finally reconciliation, healing, reunion, etc. I know I'm really coming in late here. I was aware of them in the salad days but only from a distance, and among other things had to study up on The Low End Theory and Midnight Marauders, which sounded to me like they always did, exercises out of the De La Soul branch of hip hop. Maybe that's We Got It From Here too—you can see I don't have much perspective on all this—but to me it feels like a much richer gravy on the stovetop, a stew that worked as tonic for me toward the end of the year (released November 11, 2016). It's another one I came to first via the singles, notably "We the People...," which rings with righteous authority and plainspoken truth, wrapped up tightly with an impish spirit that sweetens it just enough. "We don't believe you," it sails in with its stutter-step rhythm, "'cause we the people," later reminding us, "When we get hungry we eat the same ... food / The ramen noodle." Then it gets down to business with the lilting, chilling chorus, which spelt out the prospects at hand: "All you Black folks, you must go / All you Mexicans, you must go / And all you poor folks, you must go." I loved it for its clear-sighted view, and then "Dis Generation," a few months later, for that song's wonderful Musical Youth "Pass the Dutchie" sample whipped up into operatic storms. When I finally got to the album I found the usual ups, downs, and all-arounds of a one-hour 16-track long-player project. There's a raw guitar on some of the later tracks that can annoy. The songs can dither into aimlessness in spots. But more generally it's a surprisingly strong batch of good ones—often really good ones. I zeroed in on "Solid Wall of Sound" as one of the best examples of how they work with samples, a strong suit. This one is built off of two lines in Elton John's "Bennie and the Jets," a song I admit I have a weakness for. The Tribe track lives inside the lines "You're gonna hear electric music / Solid walls of sound," turning the second line into a figure that blows up and keeps blowing up to the size of a planet. It feels intuitively like zooming in on the fantasy concert itself in 1974 of Bennie and the Jets in a spaceship with a fluid camera, taking observations. "Solid wall of sound"—yes, computes. There are all kinds of surprises to this album and it seems to hold up well to lots of play too, usually as comfort.