Written by: Andrew Kirkpatrick

This is what the world needs right now.

A Tribe Called Quest’s We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, effortlessly dodges every cynical reunion-album critique I could possibly throw at it. This isn’t a soulless cash-in, nor does it feel like an inoffensive comeback that everyone will forget about in a couple weeks. Tribe’s final album is every bit as pointed, fun, and soulful as any of their other records. And of course it won’t have the same impact that People’s Instinctive Travels or The Low End Theory did, but the fact that the record arrives in the midst of an incredibly regressive era in American culture — and seems to have anticipated The Donald’s victory no less — makes it a powerful summation of and an antidote to our uncertainty.

We Got It From Here‘s first couple tracks are fantastic state of the union addresses from Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and even Jarobi (who has some serious bars on this project). Things kick off with “The Space Program,” which finds Tip, Jedi, and the late Phife trading bars as if it were still the 90s, dealing in hypotheticals (“They takin’ off to mars, got the space vessels overflowing’ / What, you think they want us there? All of us n****s not going!”) before revealing their cards: “Imagine if this shit was really talking ’bout space, dude.”

The next track, “We the People,” is a fantastic, quip-heavy chincheck that seems ready-made for the era of progressive anger our country is destined to enter. The barbed lyrics aimed at our current climate of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and manipulative press are venomous and empowering. Some of the bars here are downright glorious; from Tip we get “You in the killing-off-a-good-young-n****-mood / But when we get hungry we eat the same fuckin’ food;” and from Phife, “We’re not just n**** rappers with the bars / It’s kismet that we’re cosmic with the stars,” and “We got your missy smitten, rubbing on her little kitten / Dreaming of a world that’s equal for women with no division / Boy, I tell you that’s vision.” And here I was worried Phife’s contributions would be throwaway material that’s been collecting dust in a vault.

This cut is the album’s clearest radio track, and stands as one of the best singles both in Tribe’s lofty discography in the context of 2016 as a whole. Rap is generally a young man’s game — the fact that a bunch of dudes in their mid-40s made an infectious track that’s blowing up on the streaming charts is both incredibly surprising and very well deserved.

Lyrically, these tracks demonstrate that Tribe hasn’t changed much; as always, the crew wears their hearts on their sleeves, indulges in laid back flows, and mixes fiercely intelligent commentary with classic hip-hop braggadocio. That, of course, is a good thing.

But these songs also show that the New York legends have changed their approach to production considerably. Rest assured, the beats are still sample-heavy and laced with the sounds of jazz, funk, and R&B, but Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad recognize that they’re in a post-Kanye world. Instrumentals aren’t based around two or three samples plus some scratches like they were a couple decades ago. Very fortunately, the beats across We Got It From Here see the crew marry their established sound to the more freewheeling and progressive stylings of current hip-hop production rather than vie for lame nostalgia or desperately attempt to be too hip. Put simply, I doubt Tip and Shaheed Muhammad could’ve dreamed up the massive drums and oscillating bass on “We the People” or the dynamic mix on “The Space Program” back in their glory days.

While the group narrows each song’s focus after this explosive opening stretch, the onslaught of eloquent topical tracks doesn’t stop. “Dis Generation” — which features a stellar guitar-driven beat — is an optimistic take on the current state of hip-hop, as Q-Tip dubs Joey Bada$$, Earl Sweatshirt, J. Cole, and Kendrick Lamar the new “gatekeepers of flow.”

K.Dot himself is the centerpiece of late-album cut “Conrad Tokyo,” delivering an apocalyptic verse that perfectly fits the track’s theme of worsening economic disparity: “Just embrace it and die alone, the song of Revelation / Reverends and cattle racing / Devils and demons and Deuteronomy / Fumigate our economy, illuminate broken dreams.” Needless to say, Kendrick didn’t waste any time living up to the title Tip bestowed upon him.

But while songs about passing the torch continue with tracks like “Kids” (a fantastic collab with Andre 3000), “Moving Backwards” (featuring a scene stealing Anderson Paak and a sly, percussive guitar-and-bass groove), and the Q-Tip solo cut “Ego,” Tribe still has plenty of potent statements to make.

“The Killing Season” is a powerful rumination on black marginalization and police brutality, kicking off with a tough-as-nails verse from Talib Kweli, ascending into a lush instrumental heavy with string samples, and closing with some biting bars from Jarobi: “Connection to the sun so strong, the relationship is lusted for / Causes men to suffocate, I can’t breathe no more / …Black soul bold enough, inner city cold enough / Watch me get all my goons, watch us get soldiered up.”

“Whateva Will Be” provides the fatalistic counterpoint to this call to action. Tip, Phife, Jarobi, and Beats Rhymes and Life-era Tribe affiliate Consequence spit verses about the omnipresent threat of violence against their communities. The bars here are loaded with pure pathos and Tip drives the message home perfectly with an eccentric and faintly melodic bridge, singing “Everybody’s running when they see the storm coming / But whatever’s gonna be will be / Some will dash to the mountain, some will crawl / And the weakest amongst them, they will fall / But the strongest in faith, they will stand tall.” The inevitability of suffering — and the fact that the only choice you have in the face of it is your disposition towards it — is pretty grim territory for the group, but it only makes the record’s spirited, life-affirming anthems that much more effective. As a lot of rappers age and grow in popularity, their vision narrows and all they can do is retread the topics that were crucial to formulating their brand. Q-Tip and crew stand in sharp contrast to this, offering not a skewed sliver of the world only experienced by the rich and disconnected, but a vision of life in its entirety.

As such, We Got It From Here is just as personal as it is political, and the tracks that see the group looking inward and to each other rather than at the world around them are as thoughtful and engaging as you’d expect. “Solid Wall of Sound” is one such song, and it’s my favorite cut from the record as of now. Living up to its title, colossal drums and bass dominate the mix while a jangling acoustic guitar and an Elton John vocal sample fill out the margins. Phife, Tip, and Busta Rhymes trade lightning fast bars in a Trinidadian patois, perhaps out of a desire to just coast rather than try to outshine the stellar instrumental. Smart move.

Just when the song seems to wind down, it lurches back to life with an outro that hits with hurricane force. Here, the same huge rhythm swaps out its acoustic guitars and “Benny and the Jets” sample in favor of layered keys and original vocals performed by Elton John himself. Needless to say, hearing Q-Tip and Elton John sing together over one of the best beats I’ve heard all year makes for a mindblowing moment.

The record closes out with “The Donald,” which actually has nothing to do with America’s new Austin Powers villain of a President. More fittingly, it finds Q-Tip joining forces with longtime collaborator Busta Rhymes to pay tribute to Phife Dawg, who passed away in March. Tip celebrates his late collaborator’s skill, while an extended verse from the Five Foot Assassin affirms that natural ability; “Off top on the spot, no reading from your Whackberry,” he quips, “Leave your iPhones home, skill sets must be shown / I’ma show you the real meaning of the danger zone.”

The last words uttered on We Got It From Here… Thank Your 4 Your Service — the last words that’ll ever be spoken on a Tribe project — are “Phife Dawg.” And maybe the most telling way to judge A Tribe Called Quest’s final album is to compare it to other rap records made in the memory of MCs who passed before their time. My guess is that Biggie wouldn’t have been happy with how Diddy tampered with Life After Death. Hell, Tupac probably would’ve beat the shit out of Eminem if he heard the monstrosities Marshall conjured from his final recordings on Loyal to the Game. Conversely, I think Phife would be quite happy with We Got It From Here. It’s a bold continuation of everything he represented as an MC, pure and simple.

2016 has been a surreal year for our culture, and the fact that A Tribe Called Quest regrouped after losing one of their core members to put out their first record in 18 years is almost equally confounding.

Maybe the fact that I’m so surprised that Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi wrapped a pure gold bow on what’s now one of the best complete discographies I can think of reveals a certain amount of my cynicism. But luckily this album gives me (and will likely give many) an excuse to at least briefly ignore the bleak madness of this past year and engage in music that’s as fun and heartfelt as can be. I’m glad that’s the kind of art this group has stood for until the very end. Now that’s vision.