New Album of the Week; No.9We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service- A Tribe Called Quest (release date: November 11, 2016)
This generation, rules the nation, with version.In their own, sample maniplutin' way ATCQ are timelessly melodic and musical, in a similar manner to how The Buzzcocks were 40 years on. Especially Q-Tip has a voice on a 10 year old on a street corner, both "get to school!" and aged street hustler at the same time. They come out of that third wave of hip-hop; post PE and My Adidas and pre-f... the police; floating through a daisy age proclaiming ethnicity without the anger of the former or the rage of the latter. Soulful and mellow. Still. Early hip-hop can be timeless either because they strip all the way back to a kick drum or a snare or because the tunes are melodic. So when they mix up the ingenuous voices, subtler drum patterns and plinky-plonky soundtracks; it's as effective now as it was around 1990.
The whimsical tone, only angry on occasion, helps with the tribute to a lost member who died through illness. A lot of the subtler sounds help the tunes blend into a bigger whole, but, especially the first set is consistently, insistently great. They don't so much go for direct comment on the amazing state of the world and the pressure wave of racism, but they do comment and "We The People";
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, shows them address current sick circumstances with as much humour as the situation allows.
Q-Tip's a star on his own, but the snatches of Busta Rhymes and André 3000 and some interesting messing around with Elton John's Benny and the Jets (the one The Beastie Boys turned into a rumbling drawl) are a treat; Busta sounding like he's spent ten years gargling single malt whisky. The first block of 8 songs isn't one I'd choose to pick favourites from, as the lighter, sing-song rhyming backed by heavier beats, alternate with growly lyrics and Joni Mitchell dinky tones. Stooping so low as a Musical Youth sample, because their cool enough to pull it off.
Top tracks;
We The People...(explicit)/ the whole lot.