A Tribe Called Quest have persevered despite the death of one of Phife Dawg, and have managed to finally fulfil their dreams of creating of a low-quality double album.

Apparently it was Phife who chose the album title, and while the band didn’t understand it, they went along with it anyway. In many ways, the entire album reflects this mindset.

It’s not all bad news: features from Andre 3000 and Kendrick Lamar are clear highlights on the album, while the Tribe’s own rapping is just as good as it ever was, with never-ending flows and random mood swings which give the album a unique flavour. Particularly, Q-Tip delivers consistently great performances, which stand in sharp contrast to everything else he’s been doing for the past few years or so.

The lyrics themselves leave much to be desired. Anyone expecting the so-called conscious thoughts on Black America that other reviews have claimed this album to have are going to be sorely disappointed; the album shows a series of uncontroversial topics and addresses them from the most juvenile, uninformed, populist viewpoints imaginable.

Production-wise, I would say nearly half the tracks on this album are just slight variations of the same song, which could be described as a dirty-bass driven number with some jazz samples thrown in occasionally. I don’t know which of these tracks was the original variation of this theme, but no matter which one it was, the band were wrong to think it was worth repeating. The other half just sound like a more predictable rehashing of what previous albums have given us.

This album makes no attempts to justify its length, and could have accomplished the same amount (that is, if it has truly accomplished anything) in half the time.

Zack Moore