Remembering Phife Dawg
March 24, 2016
On March 22, 2016, Phife Dawg (born Malik Taylor), a founding member of the seminal group A Tribe Called Quest, died at the age of 45 due to complications from diabetes. The Current's Sean McPherson shares this reflection on the life and music of Phife Dawg and its influence on his life.
Growing up, when my older brother and I started rapping A Tribe Called Quest's lyrics, there was no question that my brother would be Q-Tip because Q-Tip was cool; he was reserved, he was the man. Phife Dawg wasn't the man, he was the everyman. He wasn't the coolest. He was the realest. Phife Dawg is probably the closest you can find on records to the joker from your day-job, the guy cracking jokes and making your shift go twice as fast as it does without him.
Now, it's March 24, 2016, and earlier this week, Phife Dawg died. The hip-hop community on my social media are in shock by quite how much Phife meant to them. With Phife only at age 45, it's not something anyone expected this soon. Nobody had written their obituary on Phife yet. Phife struggled with his health throughout his life — we learned that on his records, we learned that in Michael Rapaport's documentary, Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest. But as far as death, it's not his time yet, right? We get to follow Phife through another month of NCAA comments on Instagram, at least until the Tarheels are out, right? We get to listen to Midnight Marauders one more time without thinking about our mortality, right? The short answer is no; Phife died, and to those of us who grew up with a Tribe Called Quest, the records will never sound the same. Until now, there still might have been another record, another remix, another Jimmy Fallon appearance. Now they're a part of history.
In music, there's nothing like two rappers together. When that right balance between voices comes together, it's more haunting than any sung vocal harmony. There's no formula to it. Phife and Tip just worked together, they created a sound that was better than the sum of its parts. Q-Tip floated further into outer space than could ever work solo, and Phife only worked because of Q-Tip's more capricious counterweight. For a lot of listeners, it's between ATCQ and Outkast for the best hip-hop group of all time. And in the end, there's something more elusive about what makes ATCQ great. Something about Tip and Phife together. And honestly, that's because neither Phife nor Tip are going to crack the top ten as solo rappers. But they'll always get listed up top as a crew. It was that tension between the bohemian and the sports fan. It worked together.
In regards to their careers, neither did great as solo artists. Tip had his appeal as a solo artist, but he sounded ungrounded on his own. Phife was the underground embodied, but his flow, his feel, his realness — it was nice to cut that with something a bit more artsy. Now we sit trying to make sense of how to take a section out of A Tribe Called Quest. Honestly, it's almost unfathomable. But it's reality now. And now everything feels different. We are trying to make sense of how to listen to these records now that the crew is a part of history.
Those first couple times my brother stuck me with the Phife parts, I was salty; I wanted to be the artsy cool guy at the party, but it wasn't me. Phife showed me that there is a beauty in being the dude you are, being honest with who you are and still bringing it.
You'll be missed, Phife.