Instead of hiring big-name producers to work on his new album, Q-Tip hired a band and produced it all himself. "Some of my peers, to be edgy, will get Timbaland or Cool and Dre," he says. "But that's not me." The album, a return to Tip's jazzy roots in A Tribe Called Quest, does feature a few fantastic guest appearances: Norah Jones sings a glorious hook on "Life is Better"; Raphael Saadiq duets on "We Fight, We Love," about a soldier who joins the Army to pay for college and gets sent to Iraq; and D'Angelo appears on the funky "I Believe." The album, which opens with a segment of a Barack Obama speech, is hardly designed to go platinum, but Tip doesn't care. "If I'm gonna lose, I want to lose on my terms," he says. "It's a blessing to still be doing this."

Check out all of the albums in the 2008 Fall Music Preview