Jeff Weiss: Against all odds, A Tribe Called Quest delivers one final masterpiece

This Jeff Weiss article beautifully captures the significance of ATCQ's recent release We got it from here...Thank You 4 Your Service.  Below are two ponient passages that I believe capture the unprecedented nature of Tribe's most recent classic effort.  READ ARTICLE HERE.

What the foursome (also including Jarobi White and Ali Shaheed Muhammad) has achieved is almost unthinkable: shedding two decades of rust to create something that neither traffics in nostalgia nor mimics the past, while retaining the Day-Glo fluorescence, mystic chords, and jazz-fortified aesthetic that made them stars in the first place. If Phife didn’t update his references to Muggsy Bogues for ones in favor of John Wall, you could almost be convinced that this was originally recorded in 1992 or 1998 or 2006....


...There are few, if any, hip-hop analogues for this achievement. Dr. Dre’s “Compton” followed a decade-and-a-half hiatus, but ultimately felt like an impressive coda celebrating a long-extinct golden era. De La Soul’s recent effort this year proved exactly how halfway attempts to modernize your sound can lead to it seeming monochrome. If anything, “We Got It” is the nexus between D’Angelo’s “Black Messiah” and David Bowie’s “Blackstar.” It is at times political, at times spiritual, at all times focused on leaving behind a profound artifact. To paraphrase Auden, this shows an affirming flame at a time beleaguered by negation and despair.