If It's Too Loud...

To be completely fair, I could be overrating this a bit because of what it's not: absolutely horrible. With very few exceptions, whenever a rap artist from the 80s and 90s releases a comeback album, it's pretty much guaranteed to be universally horrible. In an attempt to sound current, they all seem to get stuck on what Puff Daddy did in 1998 and just have an R&B chorus over everything. Which is why A Tribe Called Quest's latest,  We got it from Here... Thank You 4 Your service, should be horrible. It's their first album in almost 20 years. That's never a good sign, regardless of what genre you're looking at. Plus, it was released after the death of a major member. After Phife Dawg's death back in March, they could have just rushed this out to capitalize on it. Instead, they took their time and released one of the best albums of the year, and maybe even the best hip hop album in years. To be fair, there aren't any "Scenario"s on here, b...

This just dropped overnight (do the kids still say dropped?), so I can't vouch for it being any good, but I can vouch for it being free. Free mixtapes tend to be the domain of new, rising hip hop acts and are rarely used by established legends like Q-Tip and Busta Rhymes. They could have easily saved a collaboration for an actual album, but instead they're offering it for free. There aren't even sketchy download codes and email entries that make you start to wonder if you're being phished. It even features A Tribe Called Quest, Redman, Raekwon, Big Daddy Kane, and more. It's 28 tracks including skits, so I'm sure it can't all be "Scenario," but really, what can be. Before you head off to work, download The Abstract & the Dragon   here . If you're not ready for that level of commitment, you can stream the entire thing below.