--- title: "A Tribe Called Quest’s final album We Got It from Here… turns 10, made in secret at Q-Tip’s home studio" url: https://badiyaa.com/tribe-called-quest-we-got-it-from-here-10/ published: 2026-11-11T04:25:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-11T04:25:00+00:00 section: Entertainment publisher: Badiyaa --- # A Tribe Called Quest’s final album We Got It from Here… turns 10, made in secret at Q-Tip’s home studio A Tribe Called Quest released its sixth and final album, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, ten years ago on November 11, 2016. Ten years ago today, on November 11, 2016, A Tribe Called Quest released *We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service*, a sixth studio album almost nobody outside the group knew existed. It arrived 18 years after *The Love Movement*, the 1998 record that had looked like a permanent goodbye, and it went straight to number one on the US albums chart. It was also the last word. Q-Tip has said the group will not make another studio album, which makes this anniversary the tenth birthday of the final chapter in one of hip hop’s most loved catalogs. ## A late-night TV spot that restarted everything The comeback began with a single performance. On November 13, 2015, the group played *The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon*, and the energy in the room convinced the members to set old disagreements aside. Q-Tip later explained that the show told him a return to the studio would come easily. They agreed to record without announcing anything. Phife Dawg’s expectations were modest. His mother recalled that he imagined a short EP of perhaps five songs and never pictured a full album. The sessions ran for close to a year instead. ## Inside the AbLab Work happened at the AbLab, Q-Tip’s home studio in New Jersey, named after his nickname “Abstract.” It was packed with analog gear, including preamps that had been used on records by Jimi Hendrix, Blondie and the Ramones, plus a tape machine once owned by Frank Zappa. Phife was being treated for diabetes with dialysis three times a week. He flew in, stayed at a hotel near the studio with his manager Dion “Rasta Root” Liverpool, and recorded with Q-Tip in the evenings. Liverpool compared watching the pair trade lines and argue over beats to “watching a unicorn.” Q-Tip said the sessions made them feel like “kids again.” Phife died on March 22, 2016, from complications of diabetes, before the album was finished. Q-Tip completed it, and the group kept the title Phife had chosen even though the others never fully understood what he meant by it. ## The guest list The credits read like a cross-generational summit. André 3000 trades verses with Q-Tip on “Kids…,” Kendrick Lamar joins Phife on “Conrad Tokyo,” and Elton John and Jack White both appear on “Solid Wall of Sound,” which samples “Bennie and the Jets.” Kanye West, Talib Kweli, Anderson .Paak, Busta Rhymes and Consequence also feature. Ali Shaheed Muhammad sat out the production because he was scoring the *Luke Cage* soundtrack with Adrian Younge at the time. ## The decade in numbers - **November 12, 2016:** one day after release, the group performed “We the People….” and “The Space Program” as musical guest on *Saturday Night Live*. - **135,000 units:** the opening-week total that put the album at number one, with 112,000 of those from pure album sales. - **20 years:** the gap since the group’s previous chart-topping album in 1996, the longest stretch between number one albums for any hip hop act. - **May 22, 2017:** certified gold in the US for 500,000 album-equivalent units, which meant every Tribe studio album now carried a certification. Those figures sit next to another Tribe milestone from this month. Badiyaa recently marked the day in 1993 when [Midnight Marauders landed alongside Wu-Tang Clan’s debut](https://badiyaa.com/wu-tang-36-chambers-tribe-midnight-marauders-november-9-1993/), and the guest spot from André 3000 links this record to [Outkast’s recent Georgia collection with Nike](https://badiyaa.com/outkast-nike-georgia-collection-atlanta-florida-game/). ## Why it still matters Most reunion albums trade on memory. This one sounded current: “The Space Program” opens the record as a metaphor for gentrification and a call for unity, and much of what follows carries sharp political commentary released days after a US presidential election. Critics placed it among the best albums of 2016, and several later ranked it among the best of the decade. It also serves as a farewell to Phife, whose voice appears on eight of the 16 tracks, including the closer, “The Donald.” Ten years on, the 60-minute, 20-second record remains the last time Q-Tip, Phife and Jarobi White share a tracklist as A Tribe Called Quest. More from the genre lives in our [Entertainment section](https://badiyaa.com/category/entertainment/). ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: We Got It from Here… Thank You 4 Your Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Got_It_from_Here..._Thank_You_4_Your_Service) *Image: James Chutter, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*