Appreciation: A Tribe Called Quest’s Phife Dawg: Hip-hop’s quintessential New Yorker

On Tuesday, Malik Isaac Taylor, an original member of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest and professionally known as Phife Dawg, died. He was 45; the cause of death was complications resulting from diabetes, according to a statement issued by his family.

If bebop had 1945, and punk had 1977, hip-hop had 1991. More specifically, the coalition of affiliated New York MCs known as Native Tongues dropped several magna cartas in 1991. The full list of significant albums would eat up this column, but three vital releases were Black Sheep’s “A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing,” De La Soul’s “De La Soul Is Dead” and, a foot above the rest, A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Low End Theory.”

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That album is part of me, like a tattoo, but “The Low End Theory” song I go to when I can’t pick one is “Bugging Out,” one of Phife’s biggest moments. In the same way that Biggie’s lyrics are almost impossible to not memorize, Phife just sounds canonical here, the quintessential New Yorker. “I tell you this much, riding on the train with no dough SUCKS.” After this line, it takes a few seconds to adjust focus and even hear the verse by Q-Tip, the band’s leader.

But this is just one of 13 basically perfect moments. Anyone who grew up in New York with rap had a lot to be proud of that year; it was a visceral thrill to watch Long Island’s Public Enemy strafe the nation with militarism, but it was most fun to have bragging rights to Quest. Who could possibly dislike this music? If anything could silence the doubters — and nothing can, just ask recidivist Gene Simmons — it was this album. Hell, Ron Carter plays on it.

Native Tongues was established in 1988 when Long Island’s De La Soul released “3 Feet High and Rising,” momentarily misleading listeners into thinking this bunch of rappers had some interest in creating some sort of new black hippie. (The risk of putting flowers on your album cover is invoking flower power.) On various De La Soul remixes, all of the members of the cohort popped up, even if they didn’t yet have an album out. Queens’ A Tribe Called Quest, who fluctuated between quartet and trio as MC Jarobi came and went, released its first full-length in 1990 with “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.”

Along with Jungle Brothers and auxiliary collaborators, Native Tongues presented something less like organized dogma and more like a repeated series of themes. Afrocentrism was central, a certain sense of goofy play was common and, especially with Quest, there was an emphasis on sampling jazz rather than the funk records that had formed the backbone of hip-hop since sampling became technically possible, and common, in the late ‘80s.

This was a peak of a certain kind of hip-hop that would not survive the hegemonic tidal wave of Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” in 1993. If casual misogyny and violence seem woven into the fabric of rap now, it wasn’t then. Quite the opposite — “Infamous Date Rape,” from “Low End Theory,” is an ANTI-rape song. The lack of shock value in the subject matter, 25 years later, is shocking.

Though the production on most of Quest’s albums was credited to the band, the almost-comically influential use of upright bass and horns was down to Q-Tip. As shown in Michael Rapaport’s excellent 2011 documentary on the band, “Beats, Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest,” this tension never disappeared. Q-Tip was the visionary who probably carried more than his fair share; Phife was the loyal team player who couldn’t seem to entirely win the love of his big brother but simultaneously couldn’t argue that Q-Tip wasn’t doing more work. (It’s never 100% clear what DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad did or didn’t do, other than look very calm.) Most bands have this classic imbalance; somebody draws up the plans and does the heavy lifting but still needs his band mates to make the magic. Just plug in A Tribe Called Quest, the Beatles, Wire, the Replacements and Sly & the Family Stone if you want to use the “solo album” test. Everyone needs to be in the room, for whatever reason, to get the most out of the big talent.

Q-Tip’s “monotone” was impeccably crisp and his wordplay elegant; Phife was rough and deceptively simple. On “Jazz (We’ve Got),” Phife even acknowledges that some listeners thought he couldn’t “kick it” (next to Q-Tip’s complexity, one assumes). But Phife was the more human of the two, the underdog who wavered in and out of seriousness, who would discuss the mundane and punch out rhymes in a casual way, as if overly stylized rapping were almost too fancy for a genuinely New York group.

Less than being a main rapper with a sidekick, Quest revolved around two rappers who approached the beat differently. Q-Tip was the rapper, clustering and fracturing phrases; and Phife was the talker, the direct delivery man.

There are traces of Phife’s regular-guy approach in new artists like Open Mike Eagle & Paul White, and there is a trace of that permanent underdog status in some of the Odd Future collective. But there is no theory that justifies losing one of hip-hop’s most solid MCs. I’m glad I saw A Tribe Called Quest’s reunion tour in 2008 — there should have been another one on the books for 2018.

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