L.A. Reid, currently the chairman and CEO of Epic Records, dropped a real bomb last Friday when he announced that a new Tribe Called Quest album will see the light of day “very soon,” according to Rolling Stone. What’s more, according to Reid, the LP was completed before one of the group’s founding members, MC Phife Dawg, suddenly passed away in March last year.
Reid shared the news in his appearance on Rap Radar Podcast, saying that “[…] it’s really something special. It’s one of the things I’m most excited about over everything we’re working on,” and that “Phife is there, the whole group: Jarobi, the entire group, everybody.” The group in question, however, has not confirmed any of his words yet.
A Tribe Called Quest’s last album, The Last Movement, was released nearly 18 years ago, in September 1998. The group’s four original members (Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi White) split shortly thereafter. They would reunite several times over the years for live appearances, the last one being on November 13, 2015. Phife Dawg passed from complications related to diabetes four months later, age 45.
Watch a video to “Electric Relaxation,” a classic Tribe Called Quest cut from one of their best-received albums, 1994’s Midnight Marauders: