Watch A Tribe Called Quest Go To Space And Tribute Phife Dawg In Their ‘Final’ Video

This is it. A Tribe Called Quest bids farewell with their new video for “The Space Program,” the initial track from the group’s stellar 2016 reunion album, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service.


The Warren Fu-directed video is being billed because the group’s last, and if that’s true, at least they can mention they went out with a bang. It opens with Q-Tip waking up in a spaceship of sorts, as televisions broadcast footage of riots and racist imagery. It’s a theme that’s visited while in the video, particularly at the end, as soon as the ship malfunctions and the message “I CAN’T BREATHE” — which echoes the last words of Eric Garner — appears. In the end, the three remaining members of Tribe just be on a barren planet. The late, good Phife Dog’s presence, meanwhile, is beautifully represented by a green, glowing orb.


The epic clip also features a ton of cameos while in, from Vince Staples, Kelly Rowland, Janelle Monae, Pharrell, Alicia Keys, Rosario Dawson, Anderson .Paak, Typical, Questlove, and more. They all appear to rap the song’s urgent hook: “Gotta get it with each other forever / Gotta get it with each other for brothers / Gotta get it with each other for sisters / For mothers and fathers and dead n---as.”


At the end, we visualize a dedication that reads “For Malik,” or Phife Dawg, who passed away in 2016. Because the credits roll, a montage of classic ATCQ photographs appear, because the group’s 1990 hit “Can I Kick It?” Plays.


Preview the clip below, and watch the whole 8-minute video exclusively on Apple Music.


Following the video’s premiere on Thursday (March 29), Q-Tip spoke to Zane Lowe about Phife’s passing. He mentioned, “I miss my boy still. ... And in this moment, I just break up While I hear my man's voice or As soon as I visualize [a] picture of us, or maybe if it's not a Tribe record, I might hear a song that we grew up with, and we'll will usually talk about something that was a personalized preference of ours or a tour preference, or something that we would joke about or we would recall things like that.”


He continued, “But in terms of the particular order, in a professional setting, you know — I have the closure. I'm good with it. I look back at what we contributed to hip-hop, I look back at what we contributed to music, some days with disbelief.”