Released 18 years after its predecessor The Love Movement, the album was recorded at the AbLab, the New Jersey home studio of group member Q-Tip.

The recording featured guest appearances from André 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Jack White, Elton John, Kanye West, Anderson .Paak, Talib Kweli, Consequence, and Busta Rhymes.

For years, Tribe denied that any new material was recorded, or even planned, although they reunited briefly to play several shows during Kanye West's Yeezus Tour in 2013.

[5] Group member Q-Tip said that because of The Tonight Show appearance, "I knew if we were connecting with that kind of energy in a performance, it would be easy to go back to the studio."

The studio had been designed with his longtime engineer Blair Wells as a "dream project" that "took years to complete", according to Consequence, the rapper's cousin.

The rest of his time was spent staying at a hotel near Q-Tip's home with his manager Dion "Rasta Root" Liverpool and recording the album during the evening.

[8] The recording featured guest contributions from André 3000, Kendrick Lamar, Jack White, Elton John, Kanye West, Anderson .Paak, Talib Kweli, and A Tribe Called Quest's most frequent collaborators Consequence and Busta Rhymes.

[14] The following day, A Tribe Called Quest appeared as the musical guest on the sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, where they performed "We the People...." and "The Space Program".

[19] Christopher R. Weingarten of Rolling Stone believed that "in both delivery and content", A Tribe Called Quest "maintain the attitude of the Bohemian everydude funkonauts that inspired Kanye West, Andre 3000 and Kendrick Lamar (who all appear here)".

[25] In Spin, Brian Josephs praised how the group "worked with the understanding that black music at its finest conversed with ancestry while pointing toward future possibilities in resistance against the racist forces that run parallel.

Club believed the music had more in common with Q-Tip's 2008 solo album The Renaissance than with the group's previous work; he called We Got It from Here... "a sinuous sound collage pulling much more from ’90s and ’00s R&B than it does Native Tongues boom-bap".

[18] Critic Robert Christgau hailed the album as a "triumph" in his review for Vice, writing that the record "represents both their bond and the conscious black humanism they felt sure the nation was ready for ... urging us to love each other as much as we can as we achieve a happiness it's our duty to reaccess if we're to battle as all we can be.

It was ranked third by Complex; fourth by Billboard, Paste, Q, Slant Magazine, and Spin; fifth by Clash; sixth by The Independent and State; seventh by Pitchfork; eighth by Fact; and tenth by Esquire.