A Tribe Called Quest
The best is back with “We the People”
The legendary hip-hop group, A Tribe Called Quest, is back with their first album of brand-new material since 1998, We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service. All of the four original members of the group contributed to the album: Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Jairobi White and Phife Dawg, who died in March from the long-term complications of diabetes. The remaining three performed a new single, “We the People,” with the image of Phife on a large scroll behind them, on Saturday Night Live on November 12; Dave Chappelle, himself mostly MIA for the better part of a decade, was the host and the song itself took on far greater meaning with the election of Donald Trump as president only days before. The video of that performance is below; the studio version above.
“We the People” is as topical and provocative as they come. Q-Tip sings: “All you Black folks, you must go / All you Mexicans, you must go / And all you poor folks, you must go / Muslims and gays, boy, we hate your ways / So all you bad folks, you must go.” And the Tribe is unequivocal about where this prescription arises: “The fog in the smog of new media that logs / False narratives of guys that came up against the odds.” It’s a warning, it’s a call to arms, it’s a solace. “We are all one,” Q-Tip said as an introduction. Indeed we are, and PROVOKR gives the Tribe’s return a loving salute.
