"Warm, immediate and intensely personal."--New York Times
How does one pay homage to A Tribe Called Quest? The seminal rap
group brought jazz into the genre, resurrecting timeless rhythms to
create masterpieces such as The Low End Theory and Midnight
Marauders. Seventeen years after their last album, they resurrected
themselves with an intense, socially conscious record, We Got It from
Here . . . Thank You 4 Your Service, which arrived when fans needed
it most, in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Poet and essayist
Hanif Abdurraqib digs into the group's history and draws from his own
experience to reflect on how its distinctive sound resonated among
fans like himself. The result is as ambitious and genre-bending as
the rap group itself.
Abdurraqib traces the Tribe's creative career, from their early days
as part of the Afrocentric rap collective known as the Native
Tongues, through their first three classic albums, to their eventual
breakup and long hiatus. Their work is placed in the context of the
broader rap landscape of the 1990s, one upended by sampling laws that
forced a reinvention in production methods, the East Coast-West Coast
rivalry that threatened to destroy the genre, and some record labels'
shift from focusing on groups to individual MCs. Throughout the
narrative Abdurraqib connects the music and cultural history to their
street-level impact. Whether he's remembering The Source magazine
cover announcing the Tribe's 1998 breakup or writing personal letters
to the group after bandmate Phife Dawg's death, Abdurraqib seeks the
deeper truths of A Tribe Called Quest; truths that--like the low end,
the bass--are not simply heard in the head, but felt in the chest.