Biography
Phife Dawg, who established A Tribe Called Quest as one of its originators alongside the wider Native Tongues collective, contributed significantly to reshaping hip-hop’s direction. Throughout the 1990s he played an essential part on the group’s landmark ATCQ releases, then pursued a substantial solo path across the 2000s and afterward. While secretly contributing to the recording of Tribe’s sixth and final project, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service—their first new output since the 1998 disbandment that followed The Love Movement—he passed away in 2016. His second solo effort, Forever, reached audiences posthumously in 2022; assembled by business partner DJ Rasta Root, the album had been in development since the mid-2000s.
Born Malik Taylor, he spent his Queens, New York upbringing composing poetry before taking up rapping at school and around his neighborhood at every chance. Together with high-school peers Q-Tip (Jonathan Davis) and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, he formed ATCQ, which issued influential hip-hop recordings through the remainder of the 1990s before concluding that run with The Love Movement in 1998. In 1999 he launched his independent work with the single “Bend Ova,” the debut release on his newly founded U.K.-based Groove Attack imprint. The next year brought the full-length Ventilation: Da LP, which included contributions from Pete Rock, Hi-Tek, Supa Dave from De La Soul, and his own alter ego Mutty Ranks. Although that remained his sole album, he participated in multiple ATCQ reunions during the 2000s and laid down material for a planned follow-up initially called Songs in the Key of Phife: Vol. 1 (Cheryl's Big Son). After ATCQ appeared on The Tonight Show in 2015, he and the other members quietly began creating fresh tracks; four months into those sessions he died at age 45 in March 2016. Diagnosed with diabetes as early as 1990, he underwent an unsuccessful liver transplant in 2008 and received a second transplant in 2012. The day after his death the previously unheard song “Sole Men” appeared, followed later that year by the release of another unreleased track, “Nutshell.” In the ensuing years DJ Rasta Root oversaw completion of the unfinished second solo album, which stood roughly two-thirds finished; he recruited additional rappers and consulted the notebooks Phife had left detailing the intended final shape. March 2022 saw the release of the finished project, now titled Forever, featuring guest spots from Busta Rhymes, Redman, Q-Tip, Dwele, Rapsody, and numerous others.
Born Malik Taylor, he spent his Queens, New York upbringing composing poetry before taking up rapping at school and around his neighborhood at every chance. Together with high-school peers Q-Tip (Jonathan Davis) and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, he formed ATCQ, which issued influential hip-hop recordings through the remainder of the 1990s before concluding that run with The Love Movement in 1998. In 1999 he launched his independent work with the single “Bend Ova,” the debut release on his newly founded U.K.-based Groove Attack imprint. The next year brought the full-length Ventilation: Da LP, which included contributions from Pete Rock, Hi-Tek, Supa Dave from De La Soul, and his own alter ego Mutty Ranks. Although that remained his sole album, he participated in multiple ATCQ reunions during the 2000s and laid down material for a planned follow-up initially called Songs in the Key of Phife: Vol. 1 (Cheryl's Big Son). After ATCQ appeared on The Tonight Show in 2015, he and the other members quietly began creating fresh tracks; four months into those sessions he died at age 45 in March 2016. Diagnosed with diabetes as early as 1990, he underwent an unsuccessful liver transplant in 2008 and received a second transplant in 2012. The day after his death the previously unheard song “Sole Men” appeared, followed later that year by the release of another unreleased track, “Nutshell.” In the ensuing years DJ Rasta Root oversaw completion of the unfinished second solo album, which stood roughly two-thirds finished; he recruited additional rappers and consulted the notebooks Phife had left detailing the intended final shape. March 2022 saw the release of the finished project, now titled Forever, featuring guest spots from Busta Rhymes, Redman, Q-Tip, Dwele, Rapsody, and numerous others.
Albums
Singles
