2016 was a strange year for hip-hop. It was at once the pinnacle of the slurred, codeine-soaked trap music that rose in popularity around 2011 as well as a huge resurgence of boom-bap. Boom-bap is essentially the polar opposite of the high-production based voice-as-instrument styles of trappy hip-hop: it relies on a minimal, percussion based beat and as much clever lyricism as a rapper can bring to the table. In maintaining some kind of cosmic balance between these often at odds forces, it follows that at the close of a big year for crooners like Young Thug, Lil Yachty, and Travis Scott, the remaining members of A Tribe Called Quest would release their mythical final album.

Phife Dawg, born Malik Taylor, was an icon. He was one of the most highly regarded MCs of all time and remained never waned before his death due to complications of diabetes in March of this year. Along with Q-Tip and producer Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Tribe put out three impeccable albums and two that were very good. In October of last year, a few months before his death, Phife and all of the original members, along with many of their associates met in the studio and started work. They were fueled by a last performance together on The Tonight Show, as well as sorrow in the aftermath of the Paris Bombings, and they quickly started recording what they do best, funky, clever, politically charged bars that bounced from member to member as if it were their freshman album.

The album is so incredible because it does not rely on nostalgia for quality. It would have been easy for the Tribesmembers to lean on their old tropes and put out a samey attempt at replicating The Low End Theory, but they veered towards slightly more modern production and themes skewering gentrification and using outlandish samples of Elton John to an accompanying Jack White on acoustic guitar.

The showstopper on this album that is packed full of incredible features from André Benjamin to Kendrick Lamar is the track The Space Program. The track is built on an organ and barebones percussion beat and opens with a quote from the 70’s blaxploitation film Willie Dynamite. The track follows a loose narrative of a US space program taking off and leaving without black people. The space program is of course a metaphor for systemic gentrification and Q-Tip and original Tribe member Jarobi take turns lambasting the state of treatment of black Americans in every form from housing to police brutality.

In the middle of the first verse, after boasting about their lyrical prowess and how they cannot be fooled by the system, Q-Tip rails against the Voting Rights Act, rapping “They planning our future//None of our people involved.” He elicits the frustration of lack of representation in government due to oppressive redistricting and the de facto poll taxes of in person voting, particularly on a Tuesday.

He goes on to bemoan the systemic practices going on in Flint Michigan and Standing Rock of minorities being forced to bear the burden of white ecological destruction with the lyrics, “They’d rather lead us to the grayest water poison deadly smog//Mass un-blackening, it’s happening, you feel it y’all?” This mass un-blackening relates both to the destruction of lives through poisoned water as well as the gentrification of historically colored neighborhoods with the influx of wealthy white people (see: Pilsen, and ironically, Pilson’s large Latinx population only got there after being gentrified out of the UIC area).

Toni Morrison has written extensively on the idea of flight as a mode of freedom for black Americans, both in novels like Song of Solomon as well as in interviews and essays. It comes from the folk tale of the flying African. A story which in turn stems from the mass-suicide of captured Nigerian Igbo people who killed themselves as opposed to returning to slavery. The myth followed that the people actually sprouted wings and flew back to Africa. Songs of flight spread and grew into a mythology of their own.

Ironically, in The Space Program, the idea of flight is reimagined as a white flight from the problems associated with black Americans. This shift serves to show how the attempt at freedom is deemed impossible within a system designed to oppress black Americans. Instead, flight, once deemed a freedom dream for many is co-opted by the oppressors.

So where does that leave the members of Tribe? The answer lies in the hook. A resoundingly positive Phife Dawg repeats to a bouncing beat as the song fades, 

Time to go left and not right
Gotta get it together forever
Gotta get it together for brothers
Gotta get it together for sisters
For mothers and fathers and dead n—–
For non-conformers, won’t hear the quitters
For Tyson types and Che figures

As the hook fades into the outro, a trippy sample of Gene Wilder (another great who passed away in 2016) in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we are reminded that this is an uphill battle and “they’re certainly not showing, any signs that they are slowing!”

So on behalf of all people, let’s make something happen.