Recorded on the brink of founding member Phife Dawg’s death from complications of diabetes, A Tribe Called Quest belatedly reunited after in-fighting following 1998’s The Love Movement. The result, their sixth and final album: We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service. Politically charged, funky, and mixed thunderously, Tribe take on the emergence of Trumpism — as the album’s second song, “We The People,” chimes ironically: “All you mexicans you must go / And all you poor folks, you must go / Muslims and gays / boy we hate your ways” — with ferocious chutzpah. As if to compound the gargantuan talents on display, the album boasts a Hollywood cast of additional features: from frequent collaborators Busta Rhymes and Consequence, through to Kanye, Kendrick, Anderson .Paak, Elton John, André 3000 (deep breath) and The White Stripes’ Jack White. One hell of a parting statement.
Damn. by Kendrick Lamar (2017)
Lamar begins his third studio album, Damn., with his imagined death. On “BLOOD.,” the album’s opening track, the Compton rapper relays a story — undergirded by the heroic strings that might accompany the final showdown of a Western Man Without a Name — in which an old, blind woman shoots him. Yep, this is Lamar at his most unabashedly introspective: variously fatalistic, self-deprecating, and existential. Ever the conscious, soul-bearing artist, there are clear throughlines from his prior works: “PRIDE.,” in which he wrestles with his romantic insecurities, is a spiritual successor to Butterfly’s “u,” whereas “DNA.” is as much a paean to Black excellence as any of his self-celebratory hits. It’s as formally adventurous as anything Lamar has done, and albeit more compact than both Butterfly and Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, it’s certainly not lacking ideas. An instant classic.
