The iconic hip-hop groups Phife Dawg wished he was in
As an essential part of A Tribe Called Quest, Phife Dawg was among hip-hop’s most important figures. Tribe were the envy of so many rappers, but it turns out that Phife, too, looked upon other groups with reverence.
On the Tribe song ‘Clap Your Hands,’ lifted from their Midnight Marauders album, Phife raps a verse that gives us a little clue as to who his hip-hop inspirations were. “Favorite rap group in the world is EPMD,” he raps. “Can’t forget the De La, due to originality.”
The next line bears a healthy dose of the braggadocious. “And if I ever went solo,” the Five-Foot Assassin says, “my favourite MC would be me.”
During a conversation with Interview magazine in 2015, not long before he sadly died from complications related to his diabetes, Phife opened up about his relationship to hip-hop. His background—raised in Queens by Trinidadian immigrants, one of whom was a poet—made it almost inevitable that he would find it.
“Music is part of my DNA,” Phife said. “Being from New York City, hip-hop is in my blood. Being a West Indian, music is in my blood—calypso. Poetry is in my blood, my mom’s a poet. Other than sports, nothing else really matters except for family and good food. It’s always going to be a part of me no matter what.”
Throughout the interview, Phife offers little snapshots of his life and personality. We learn, for instance, of who his childhood heroes were, and, predictably, a lot of them were musical. “Stevie Wonder,” he begins, “Magic Johnson, Teddy Pendergrass, Donny Hathaway, my mom and my dad. My grandmother.”
Phife was also asked what bands he wished that he’d been a part of. “Run DMC,” he answered. “De La Soul, Wu-Tang, NWA.”
Several of those answers are hardly surprising. Run DMC, De La Soul and Wu-Tang were all fellow New Yorkers, so Phife’s loyalty to them is somewhat to be expected. Plus, Tribe were very closely associated with De La Soul, who were in the Native Tongues collective that Tribe also counted themselves a part of.
But the fact that Phife highlighted NWA indicates that he didn’t have much time for the East-West rivalry that raged throughout the ’90s. In fact, on the Tribe song ‘Keep It Moving’ from Beats, Rhymes and Life, Q-Tip explicitly declares Tribe’s neutrality in the feud, celebrating both coasts for their artistry and innovation. Phife’s love of NWA proves he was similarly minded.