LOS ANGELES — On a large outdoor stage for a “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show, the reunited hip-hop outfit A Tribe Called Quest recently was performing its song “We the People …”

Full of stark images of “IRS piranhas” and police brutality, “We the People …” bitterly satirizes what the group's mastermind, rapper and producer Q-Tip, referred to as Donald Trump's divisive rhetoric.

Yet as Q-Tip and his bandmates ran through the song and several more, their joy was undeniable, almost manic in its intensity. What could have been an obligatory promotional appearance felt like a hard-won celebration.

That sense of shadowed jubilation pervades A Tribe Called Quest's comeback album, “We Got It From Here … Thank You 4 Your Service,” which came out in November, just days after the presidential election, which Q-Tip said had left many Americans with “huge, looming questions about the future.”

Given the grim topics the songs grapple with — racism, misogyny, drug abuse — the record's uplifting vibe is a serious achievement, a testament to Q-Tip's goal to “speak to something higher.”

But what makes “We Got It From Here” even more remarkable is that it follows an event that might've undone this influential group for good (and may still): the unexpected death in March of one of Tribe's founding members, rapper Phife Dawg, of complications from diabetes.

“During recording, I'd do certain songs and then be like, ‘Nah, don't be so dark with it,'?” recalled Jarobi, the group's second surviving rapper. (Tribe also includes producer and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad.) “We didn't want it to be overwhelmingly sad. We're celebrating Phife, not putting dirt on him.”

That doesn't mean the album turns away from Phife's death, which occurred as the band was at work on its first record since “The Love Movement” in 1998. In the stirring “Lost Somebody,” Q-Tip directly addresses his friend, recounting their shared childhood in Queens, N.Y., before lamenting that “now you riding out/ Damn.”

But the lasting impression of “We Got It From Here” is the excitement the musicians were clearly taking in being around one another again.

Tribe existed mostly as a fond memory until November 2015, when the group, looking for another late-night promotional opportunity, performed on “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon” to call attention to a reissue of its debut album.

“We Got It From Here” debuted at No. 1 and has turned up on dozens of year-end lists.

The 40-something men of A Tribe Called Quest are now hip-hop elders. And that's something else they were eager to embrace on “We Got It From Here.”

Maturity, Q-Tip said, “is a gift. You're more interesting at 38 than you were at 28.”

miwood@latimes.com