Yesterday was the birthday of the late, great Phife Dawg and fans have honored the fallen hip hop legend by helping the latest and final A Tribe Called Quest album, We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, the number one album in America.
According to Billboard, We Got It Here... Thank You 4 Your Service sold approximately 135,000 copies in its first week, earning it the top spot on Billboard's Top 200 chart. This is ATCQ's first #1 album in twenty years, with their last #1 debut being 1996's critically acclaimed Beats, Rhymes, and Life.
The album was recorded before Phife Dawg's sudden and unexpected passing earlier this year. Earlier this week, a street sign in Phife Dawg's home neighborhood of Queens, New York was dedicated to the rapper with a ceremony that was attended by family and friends. Phife Dawg's final solo album is scheduled to be released sometime next year.
We Got It Here... Thank You 4 Your Service's commercial success has matched its critical acclaim, as the album has received almost near unanimous praise from professional critics since its release. While the album is most definitely a success in ever definition of the word, the remaining members of ATCQ have said that the process of finishing the album without Phife Dawg was an emotionally taxing one. “It’s so hard for me to sit in there and hear his voice,” Q-Tip told The New York Times earlier this month. “Sometimes I just have to like take a break and walk away. It gets heavy. It doesn’t necessarily get sad, it just gets heavy. I literally feel the energy from him when I hear his voice.”
By Michael Lacerna for RAPstation.com
