Phife Dawg: a peer, the poetry of my life

The Facebook message from my high school friend was the first thing I saw this morning:

"I don't know if you've heard ... we lost Phife Dawg. A legend. RIP."

In any debate about who the best emcees are, my answer is always A Tribe Called Quest. Always. Yes, Kane was smooth. Sure, Rakim was nice. Nas was ai'ght. But I was a Tribe fan all day every day.

That's because Tribe spoke to me. Back in the early 1990s, hip hop was beginning its transition to gangsta rap. But while Ice Cube and his crew were saying "F- the Police," my fellow Queens boys - Phife Dawg, Q-tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi - were creating a genre of hip-hop with tight jazz beats that were lyrically sound. And it was right before Sean "P-Diddy" Combs would usher in the bling era to hip hop - what would eventually rob the genre of its innocence.

Q-Tip was adorable. Nearly every girl I knew fancied herself a Bonita Applebum. But it was Phife - whose real name was Malik Taylor - who had the acrobatic tongue that made Tribe so amazing.

Listening to Tribe was listening to poetry. Their music wasn't violent - there's nothing nefarious about leaving your wallet in El Segundo. It was calming - Electric Relaxation thrust me into the ultimate chill. And it wasn't too misogynistic - although a whole generation of Tribe heads always giggle at the words: Seaman's Furniture.

The group's third album Midnight Marauders ushered me into early adulthood. I played that CD so much during the summer of 1994, (it was released in November 1993) that my roommate walked in my room once and said, "Girl, if you play that album one. more. time..."

I can't tell you how many times I burned up I-95 from my first newspaper job in Raleigh, N.C., to New York with Phife spitting "8 Million Stories:"

Went to Carvel to get a milk shake
This honey ripped me off for all my loot cakes
The car oh yeah there's money in my jacket
Somebody broke into my ride and cold macked it.

Training for a marathon, I once ran 15 miles listening on loop to People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, The Low End Theory, and Midnight Marauders.

A Tribe Called Quest calmed me.

When Tribe first came on the scene in 1990, they were a part of a larger hip-hop collective called The Native Tongues that included De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, and local deejay for 107.9 Monie Love. Native Tongue was Generation X's own black power movement, a forerunner to today's Black Lives Matter movement. And that was especially evident in the clothing: T-shirts with Afro picks and power fists, and natural twisted locks. The Native Tongues - and yes, Phife - are the reason why so many grown men I know can't leave the baggy khakis alone. And I'm quite certain their influences are behind my own head full of locks.

It was no secret that Phife had health problems. He was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes in 1991 and in one of the group's most popular jams, "Oh My God," he rapped about being a "funky diabetic."

In the 2011 documentary Beats and Rhymes, fans witnessed the toll the illness took on his life - and the group. I got an eerie feeling that Phife's time on this earth wasn't going to be long - but I never thought it would be this short. He was only 45.

This year has been a particularly hard year for music fans. Natalie Cole. David Bowie. Maurice White. Glenn Frey. These voices were all part of the soundtrack of my childhood.

But Phife? He was my peer. We were six degrees separated from being homies.

As a teenager I caught glimpses of A Tribe Called Quest at The Colosseum in Jamaica, Queens, or in Washington Square Park when I was a student at NYU. I remember when my dates and I would thoroughly analyzed a Tribe lyric. When I moved to Philly, I danced myself sweaty at Fluid when any - and I mean any - Tribe song played.

Oh My God!

Phife Dawg,I'm just so sad you're gone.

ewellington@phillynews.com
215-854-2704