Tuesday suuucked. R. pulled me out of the shower to share the news… the diggy dawg was gone. Straight gut punch. The 5-foot assassin finished his roughneck business. I am a Native Tongues head through and through. Dug everyone in the crew but De La was my shit. I loved hip-hop and they redefined it with their “new style of speak.” Then came Tribe and they doubled down on the trippy, off-beat style with tracks like I Left My Wallet In El Segundo. Hell, all I knew of El Segundo was a Fred Sanford reference but I loved it instantly. Then Bonita Applebum came out and a new funkiness started to emerge… they were pulling me in further. Finally, Can I Kick It? broke and the game was changed. This joint sounded like some boom bap hip-hop but still had that Native Tongues flow and Phife was out of the background. Fast forward to Low End Theory… Tribe owned me and Phife was at his best. I can still remember the first time I heard Check the Rhime the way white folks remember their first encounter with the Beatles. That joint was everything. Funky bass, BANGING kick drums and their rhymes were ridiculous. For me this cut is when Phife became an equal member of Tribe. I will always love Tip’s abstract poetics but Phife gave him the counterbalance the group needed to realize their potential. He played off Tip while creating his own lane. Phife was the jokester who balanced the esoteric rhymes of Tip. Q-Tip was an artiste, Phife Dawg was an artist. Of course, they had many more joints after Check the Rhime but that one set everything in motion. Sadly, the stuff that happens happened and the group broke up way too soon.
When Beats, Rhymes and Life came out in 2011 we knew it was not all good. Phife did not look well, hell, he didn’t even sound good. It was cool that he had a solid family life and a wife who literally gave him life with a kidney transplant in 2008. Phife deserved that. But in the film we found out Phife was battling diabetes and sugar had him like a fiend chasing that rock. That made me sad. Selfishly, I wanted him to be stronger so we could get Tribe back. It was like, “damn Phife, sugar?!?” We can never understand another person’s struggle.
So now he’s gone but he left jewels that will live on. The tributes are pouring in as cats acknowledge the role Phife and ATCQ played in their lives. I’ll miss him but I am thankful for the great memories and the talent he shared during a great time in my life. We are all left to wonder if there will be another time we hear a funky diabetic – I don’t know man, I don’t know man, I don’t know man, I don’t know, I don’t know… but we had one.
