Nine years after Amplified, Q-Tip came back with the record that reconnected him to the sound he helped build. The Renaissance is warm, jazzy, and almost entirely self-produced, spacey grooves and looping guitar lines under some of his most limber writing since the Tribe days. J Dilla surfaces on "Move," one of the last beats he handed over, and guests Norah Jones, D'Angelo, and Raphael Saadiq fill out the edges without ever pulling focus. "Life Is Better" runs down a list of the rappers who raised him. A grown, unhurried hip-hop record.