Solid Wall of Sound

Album: We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • This song is built around a sample of Elton John's funky 1970s hit, "Bennie And The Jets." Sir Elton makes a cameo at the end of the tune, singing new lyrics over his "Bennie" chords.
  • Phife Dawg, Q-Tip and Busta Rhymes exchange bars on this cut, with the latter incorporating Jamaican patois in his rhymes.

    Busta Rhymes is a long time Tribe collaborator including contributing to their 1992 breakout posse cut "Scenario." The Long Island rapper told the New York Times Q-Tip had one major rule for the album: He insisted that everyone who was a part of it come work in the studio.

    "If you wrote your rhyme somewhere else, you still had to come back and lay your verse in Q-Tip's house," Rhymes said. "So we pretty much did every song together. Everybody wrote his stuff in front of everybody. Everybody spat their rhymes in front of each other. We were throwing ideas around together."
  • Jack White supplied acoustic guitar and additional vocals. Q-Tip and Jack White first connected when he asked permission to do an old Tribe song called "Excursions" in his stage show. It turned out they were mutual admirers of each other's work.

    Q-Tip told New York Times White came to the studio without his own gear. "He just took a guitar off the wall and plugged it in and just got his wizard on."

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