Song · A Tribe Called Quest
“We the People” by A Tribe Called Quest
From the album We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service (2016)
“We the People” by A Tribe Called Quest appears on 7 radio countdowns from 4 stations between 2016 and 2026. It was first released in 2016 on the album We got it from Here… Thank You 4 Your service. Its best result is #5 on the 893 Essential Songs of The Current: 2005 to Now. In the combined RockLists rankings it is the #129 indie & aaa song of 2016 and #979 indie & aaa song of all time.
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"We the People" was the opening shot from We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, the sixth and final A Tribe Called Quest album, released on Epic in 2016. Q-Tip produced it, with Blair Wells co-producing, and he built the track on a drum break lifted from Black Sabbath's "Behind the Wall of Sleep", which is why Geezer Butler, Tony Iommi, Ozzy Osbourne and Bill Ward share the writing credit with Q-Tip and Phife Dawg.
The title borrows the first words of the Preamble to the US Constitution, and the hook flips Donald Trump's campaign rhetoric into a bitter parody: a protest record that knocks as hard as it argues. Critics took it to heart, and it turned up on a stack of year-end lists.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
RockLists rankings
Indie & Adult Alternative
All Rock Formats
Year-end countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 9 | The Current Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN | The Current Top 89 Songs of 2016 | 89 |
All-time and decade countdowns
| Year | # | Station | Countdown | of |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 78 | KEXP | KEXP Listeners' Favorite Songs of All Time | 627 |
| 2022 | 374 | KEXP | KEXP Top Songs of the Last 50 Years (1972-2022) | 491 |
| 2024 | 431 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Songs of the 21st Century | 1055 |
| 2025 | 5 | The Current | 893 Essential Songs of The Current: 2005 to Now | 893 |
| 2025 | 690 | 90.9 The Bridge | 90.9 The Bridge Top 909 Songs of the 21st Century | 909 |
| 2026 | 590 | The Colorado Sound | The Colorado Sound Top 1055 Songs You Discovered on The Colorado Sound | 1055 |
Also listed as: We The People....; We the People...; We The People; We the People.....
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