6 — Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

ACROSS
1 Wobbly dessert
6 Pal
9 Vintner’s tub
12 Birdlike
13 Drachma replacer
14 B&Bs
16 Source of post-
toilet training
anxiety
18 Use too much of,
briefly
19 Many SAT takers
20 Dashboard
feature
21 Reach through
the air
22 Surfer’s
destination
25 Treat, as table
salt
28 Major blood
vessel
29 Male in the hive
30 Sharp-tasting
32 Trailer park
parkers
35 Actor Cariou of
“Blue Bloods”
36 Great Depression
recovery program
39 Question of
method
40 Letters on a law
office door
41 Purges (of)
42 “The Hot Zone”
virus
44 Quick-as-lightning
Bolt
47 Apt to
malfunction, as
wiring
48 Youngest son of
Queen Elizabeth II
52 Illumination units
53 Have __: know
someone
54 “The Night Of”
channel
57 Slender
woodwind
58 Desert plant
suggested by this
puzzle’s circles
61 Dingbat
62 Flat-package
furniture chain
63 River through
western
Germany
64 Florida island
65 Video game
initials
66 Separates for the
wash

DOWN
1 Quick punches
2 “Did you __?!”
3 The eyes have
them
4 Murphy’s __
5 Standard eggs
purchase
6 Play with Lincoln
Logs, say
7 Coffee hour
vessel
8 Peat source
9 Purple shade
10 Artist nicknamed
the “Pope of Pop”
11 Govt. bill
13 And others, in
bibliographies
15 Stuck-up sort
17 Goodyear product
21 Pres. who
developed the 36-
Across
22 Finish in front
23 Stuff to sell
24 Itty bit
25 Not employed
26 Rock groups?
27 Man of La
Mancha
30 Packing rope
31 Say further
33 Chevy’s plug-in
hybrid
34 Rock to music

37 Great Lake
bordering four
states
38 Knowledge
seekers
43 Flower source
45 Companion of
Bashful
46 Bldg. coolers
47 Get no credit for,
in school
48 Walk heavily
49 Big name in
puzzle cubes

50 British
noblewomen
51 Where to see the
Sun, the Sky and
the Stars: Abbr.
54 Will beneficiary
55 Like an arm in a
sling
56 Lyrical lines
58 Altoids 
container
59 Island strings
60 Question of
identity

By Alex Eaton-Salners
©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/15/16

11/15/16

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

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Athletes retire; artists die. On 

March 22, Malik “Phife Dawg” 
Taylor – the funky diabetic – 
finally 
lost 
his 

career-spanning 
fight with diabe-
tes at the age of 
45. What started 
as a strain on 
his 
relationship 

with the Tribe 
(most infamously, 
Q-Tip), 
doubled 

as a beautifully 
fitting 
jolt 
of 

mortality to bring 
everyone togeth-
er for a parting piece.

After 18 years of silence, 

A Tribe Called Quest’s latest 
album features all four of the 
founding members, including 
Jarobi White, who left the group 
before the release of The Low 
End Theory in ’91. Though Pfife 
couldn’t make it to the album’s 
release or the stunning SNL per-
formances, his voice haunts the 
project and the minds of hip-hop 
purists for generations to come.

The title alone lends itself to 

some sort of cryptic sendoff: We 
Got It from Here... Thank You 4 
Your Service. Legend has it that 
Phife himself chose the title, 
without explanation. But would 
he really thank himself for his 
services? Released suspiciously 
close to the presidential elec-
tion, perhaps the title doubles as 
an ode to another Black Ameri-
can. Perhaps he foresaw a nation 
built on slave labor replac-
ing its first African-American 
president with a man who cam-
paigned on hate speech. Why 
else does the album close with 
“The Donald”?

Rap music – the music of 

America’s 
cracked 
pavement 

and sidewalks – provides dis-
tillations of our political cli-
mate unlike any other medium. 
I wasn’t around in ’93. I can’t 
speak on how Midnight Maraud-
ers shed light on the issues of its 
time, yet it’s clear as day how A 
Tribe Called Quest has chan-
neled the pulse of its People for 
over 30 years. We Got It from 
Here is not a case of old dogs per-
forming new tricks.

Though elements of songs 

from over 25 years ago are still 
present throughout the album, 
Q-Tip’s forward-thinking cre-
ative direction has proven to be 
timeless. The bassline funk of 
“Sucka N****” lives on within 
“Whateva Will Be,” but is retro-
fitted this time with glitchy soul 
chops and syllables. Considering 
how a song like “Excursions” 
was such an outrageous devia-
tion from the N.W.A. and Public 
Enemy of its time, history shows 
that we shouldn’t be surprised at 
how gracefully Tribe has aged.

They’re not some band of 

washed up, out-of-touch con-
servative hip-hop heads. They 
are 
permanently 
embedded 

into the canon of American rap 

music, and it’s awesome to see 
their awareness of it 18 years 
after the fact. On “Dis Genera-
tion” Q-Tip jibes “Talk to Joey, 
Kendrick and Cole / gatekeepers 
of flow / They are extensions of 

instinctual 
soul.” 

The entire song is a 
proverbial passing 
of the Zulu torch.

The same inclu-

sive approach to 
collaboration that 
birthed the Native 
Tongues has yield-
ed an album ros-
ter 
with 
friends 

old and new alike: 
Kanye West, André 
3000, Jack White, 

Consequence, Kendrick Lamar, 
Talib Kweli, Anderson .Paak and 
of course the ever-present Busta 
Rhymes.

The range of guests can make 

Thank You 4 Your Service almost 
feel like a high-school-reunion-
turned-going-away-party. Some 
friends come and go, some stick 
around longer. Kendrick Lamar 
stops by for only 20 seconds on 
“Conrad Tokyo,” but squeezes 
every bit of life from within him 
to conjure a verse that could 
make you believe that maybe, 
just maybe, it’ll bring Phife back.

The most damning thing 

about the record is that maybe 
this isn’t a world that Phife 
would even want to re-enter, 
anyways; Lamar, 29, and Phife, 
45, are generations apart but 
participants in the same Black 
American experience: “Trump 
and SNL hilarity / Troublesome 
times kid, no time for comedy 
/ … / Bullshit you spewing / As 
if this country isn’t already 
ruined.”

Old friends bring with them 

the warmth of tradition and 
familiarity. Busta Rhymes’ fin-
gerprints are predictably all over 
the album, illuminating tracks 
like “Mobius” and “The Don-
ald” with the energy of reunited 
homies. You can practically hear 
how giddy he is to share a studio 
with Phife, switching directions 
mid-verse in his classic scatter-
brained delivery: “Ayo wait wait 
wait, I gotta go again!” He never 
does go again, opting instead to 
drop hilarious pieces of street 
wisdom: “Keep it moving / Keep 
the convo short / Bring a case 
of Henny.” Bussa Buss’ promi-
nence on We Got It from Here 
is a reminder of the grassroots 
spirit Tribe has carried since 
Instinctive Travels; always have 
fun with it, and it shows in the 
music.

Album-opener 
“The 
Space 

Program” is similarly vintage 
Tribe, with Jarobi speaking on 
the prison-industrial complex 
in the absolute zaniest fashion 
possible: “Rather see we in a 
three-by-three structure with 
many bars / Leave us where 
so many are, so they can play 
with the stars / They takin’ off 
to Mars, got the space vessels 
overflowing / What, you think 
they want us there? All us n***** 
not going.” Tip chimes in more 
bluntly: “There ain’t no space 
program for n******.”

Tribe’s transformation hasn’t 

been limited only to their sonic 
palette. Most interestingly, their 
range of political concerns have 
expanded as well. In a year 
that has already seen Young 
Thug don a (very nice) dress 
on the cover of Jeffery, “We 
The People” is one of the most 
tastefully in-your-face pieces 
of social commentary this year. 
The heaviest synth in the entire 
Tribe discography twists and 
growls under a hook that’s jar-
ring out of sheer simplicity: “All 
you Black folks, you must go / 
All you Mexicans, you must go / 
And all you poor folks, you must 
go / Muslims and gays, boy we 
hate your ways.” Even Phife hits 
his native Patois accent from 
beyond the grave. It’s the energy 
of Run The Jewels but without 
the corny bullshit.

If the uncredited features 

help shroud the project in mys-
tery, the back-and-forth verses 
and left-field beat switches make 
the album excitingly unpre-
dictable for a genre based on 
repetitive loops. One of the most 
pleasant surprises is the Kanye 
West feature on “The Killing 
Season”; with only three words, 
not only does his voice take the 
song by storm, but the sound-
scape beneath him practically 
falls through a trap door.

What starts as an archetypal 

Afro-funk beat makes way for a 
series of crooning melodies that 
Tribe has never even experi-
mented with. Consequence picks 
up where ‘Ye leaves off, and the 
beat never returns to its original 
state. In the arc of the proverbial 
going away party, it feels like the 
part of the night where friends 
are drunk enough to squash 
their beef; maybe the departure 
of a friend reminds them both of 
what’s really important: “Take 
a bow / This might be your last 
performance.”

While We Got It from Here is 

largely a celebratory end to one 
of the greatest stories ever told, 
an undertone of the album is 
this certain anxiety about death. 
The going away party ends, your 
friend leaves, and what’s next 
for you? What’s next for your 
friends? What did you learn from 
the life of someone you liked 
enough to be around? Thank 
You 4 Your Service doesn’t pose 
any solutions, nor does it try to 
be something it isn’t. The simple 
“thank you” is in the title. Thank 
you, and Rest In Beats, Dawg.

EPIC

Someone’s been shopping at Ragstock.
After 18 years of silence, A Tribe 
Called Quest is still vital and fresh

The late five-foot freak makes his presence felt on first album in 18 years

2016 hasn’t been the easiest 

year on the sci-fi genre. There 
have been some bright spots, to 
be sure, with “Star 
Trek Beyond” and 
“Midnight 
Spe-

cial” both garner-
ing 
considerable 

and 
well-earned 

praise. 
Those 

films have been 
contrasted, 
how-

ever, with “Inde-
pendence 
Day: 
Resurgence,” 

which combined all the mistakes 
of its predecessor with none of 
the charm, and “The Divergent 
Series: Allegiant” and “The 5th 
Wave,” which both made compel-
ling cases for putting a kibosh on 
the modern YA genre. That’s why 
Dennis Villeneuve’s (“Prisoners”) 
“Arrival” is such a breath of fresh 
air. Because it’s not just a good sci-
fi movie; it’s the best kind of sci-fi 
movie. In fact, it’s the best kind of 
movie in general.

It nails the basics, first of all. 

Amy Adams (“Man of Steel”) 
gives the performance of her 
career as Dr. Louise Banks, a 
linguist called in to establish 
communications between the 
American government and a duo 
of aliens who landed in Montana. 
Jeremy Renner (“The Hurt Lock-
er”) and Forest Whittaker (“Pla-
toon”) do great work as well, but 
there is never a scene that isn’t 
absolutely dominated by Adams, 
who perfectly conveys the awe, 
confusion and devastation at the 

seemingly otherworldly transi-
tion her character undergoes.

The cinematography by Brad-

ford Young (“Selma”) is flat-out 
gorgeous. Whether it’s the alien 

craft 
dwarfing 

the mountainside 
it hovers above, 
the mind-bending 
shifts in gravity 
inside the thing or 
the 
simple 
inti-

macy of the scenes 
between 
Adams 

and Renner, Young 

makes every frame a work of 
art. The French-Canadian Vil-
leneuve proves yet again why 
he’s one of the most exciting 
directors working in Hollywood 
today, as his assuredness in both 
his slow pacing and nonlinear 
storytelling serve both to sepa-
rate the film from others of its 
genre and to aid it in exploring 
its themes.

It’s in those themes that 

“Arrival” truly becomes some-
thing special. It’s not a film con-
tent to throw an action scene in 
every half hour on the mark to 
keep viewers in their seats. It isn’t 
the kind of movie where the evil 
aliens are outwitted at the last 
possible second by a Goldblum-
led crew of plucky humans. It’s 
a movie defined by what it says 
rather than what it does.

For one, it’s a love letter to lan-

guage. Louise Banks waxes phil-
osophical about how language is 
“the cornerstone of civilization” 
and can change the way people 
think about and comprehend 

even simple subjects. Renner 
narrates to explain how the 
word “heptapod” was decided 
upon for the aliens. The hepta-
pod language itself is incredibly 
inventive and fits both visually 
and thematically into the world 
of the story. A love of language, 
in big ways and small, somehow 
permeates every scene of the 
movie.

More than that, “Arrival” is a 

film about humanity. This isn’t 
new to the sci-fi genre, as even 
the lesser films listed earlier 
managed to boil down to “Peo-
ple working together is good, 
so work together, people.” Vil-
leneuve and screenwriter Eric 
Heisserer (“Lights Out”) dig a 
layer deeper, though. “Arrival,” 
at its core, is about how human-
ity deals with grief — both the 
existential 
grief 
that 
comes 

with realizing the universe isn’t 
as empty as we thought or the 
far more relatable grief of loss. 
Ultimately, it also uses its wildly 
unique structuring to demon-
strate that moving beyond that 
grief is often the only way to live 
a life worth living.

It’s difficult to describe just 

how special “Arrival” is with-
out delving too deeply into what 
could be considered “spoiler ter-
ritory,” so it must be left at just 
that. It’s the third in Denis Ville-
neuve’s hat trick of modern mas-
terpieces (with “Prisoners” and 
“Sicario” rounding out the list), 
a high-concept sci-fi film that’s 
an absolute must-see for fans of 
the genre.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

Some scientist. She can’t even find the spaceship.

JEREMIAH VANDERHELM

Daily Arts Writer

Channeling Spielberg, Villeneuve creates a love letter to language

A

“Arrival”

Rave & Quality 16

Paramount Pictures

‘Arrival’ a sci-fi must-see

FILM REVIEW

A

We Got it from 

Here... Thank You 4 

Your Service

A Tribe Called 

Quest

Epic

ALBUM REVIEW

SHAYAN SHAFII

Daily Arts Writer

Tribe has 

channeled the 

pulse of the people 
for over 30 years.

