A Tribe Called Quest's 'We Got It from Here' turns 10: the album kept secret until after Phife Dawg died
A Tribe Called Quest released We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, their sixth and last album, on 11 November 2016. The group recorded it quietly at Q-Tip's home studio in New Jersey; Phife Dawg died in March 2016, and the album only became public 150 days later, when Epic Records' L.A. Reid mentioned it on a podcast.
By Riffiter
Ten years ago this week, on 11 November 2016, A Tribe Called Quest released We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, their sixth and last studio album and their first since The Love Movement in 1998. Phife Dawg had died almost eight months earlier, and outside a small circle nobody knew the album existed until less than three months before it came out.
A record kept quiet
The group played The Tonight Show in November 2015 and decided afterwards to make a new album without telling anyone. They recorded at Q-Tip's home studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Phife, who lived in the Bay Area, flew in for week-long blocks and stayed at a hotel a few minutes from the house, per Complex and Okayplayer. Questlove told Okayplayer he heard about the record early and had to sit on it: "I had to keep that secret. Hard to do."
March 22, 2016
Phife Dawg died on 22 March 2016. He was 45, and the cause was complications of diabetes. He and Q-Tip had spent about four months on the album by then. The group's manager, Rasta Root, has said Phife recorded his part of "Dis Generation" in Berkeley.
150 days
When he died, there was still no public word of the record. On 19 August 2016, 150 days later, Epic Records CEO L.A. Reid said on the Rap Radar podcast that the group had "a brand new album that they recorded before Phife passed away," as Stereogum reported. Q-Tip confirmed the 11 November release date in late October.
SNL and No. 1
The night after the release, the group played Saturday Night Live with Dave Chappelle hosting. During "We the People....", Phife's recorded verse played while a painted banner of him was lowered on stage. Busta Rhymes and Consequence joined them for "The Space Program".
The album entered the Billboard 200 at No. 1 with 135,000 units, 112,000 of them pure sales, per Billboard. It was the group's first No. 1 since Beats, Rhymes and Life in 1996. The guest list runs from André 3000, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West to Anderson .Paak, Talib Kweli, Jack White and Elton John, whose "Bennie and the Jets" sits under "Solid Wall of Sound".
| Released | 11 November 2016, Epic |
| Recorded | Q-Tip's home studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey |
| Made public | 19 August 2016, by L.A. Reid on Rap Radar |
| Billboard 200 | No. 1, 135,000 units in week one |
| Their previous No. 1 | Beats, Rhymes and Life, 1996 |
The song that stops
"Lost Somebody" ends in the middle of its chorus. Q-Tip told NPR in November 2016 that he could not finish it: "my boy's not here, so while it's done, it's still not finished."
Ten years on, it is still the group's last album. What would you give it? Rate it on Riffiter.