Phife Dawg

Bio

Phife Dawg's stage name was The Five Foot Assassin. He was, to be specific, five foot three. He died of complications from Type 1 diabetes at age 45 because his body had been at war with him since he was a teenager. That is the headline. The whole rest of this is the case for why he is, in any honest assessment of A Tribe Called Quest, an equal partner with Q-Tip and not a sidekick.

He was born Malik Taylor in 1970 in Brooklyn and raised in St. Albans, Queens. He grew up Trinidadian-American. He went to elementary school with Q-Tip. By high school they were Tribe. By 1990 they had a record deal.

The Tribe dynamic, in any of their classic-period songs, works because Phife is doing something Q-Tip cannot do. Q-Tip's voice is warm and slightly singing. Phife's voice is conversational, aggrieved, fast, very Queens. He is the one yelling about how he hates the Yankees. He is the one with "I told you in 91 / on Lyrics To Go that you'd hear it again." He is the one most rappers actually quote. The Tribe verses people quote in the comments under a SoundCloud post are usually Phife's.

His health was bad and getting worse the whole time. Type 1 diabetes since childhood. Dialysis. A kidney transplant in 2008 from his wife Deisha (a real story, in a real marriage, not metaphor). The diabetes shaped his career. He could not tour the way Q-Tip could tour. Some of the late-period Tribe tensions, as documented in the 2011 Michael Rapaport documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life, are tied to the way the illness wore on the partnership. Phife and Q-Tip were not always speaking. Sometimes they were not speaking at all.

He died on March 22, 2016 in California from complications related to diabetes. He was 45. He had been working on a solo album. He had also been working with Q-Tip on what would become We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, the final Tribe album, which came out eight months after his death. His verses on it are some of the best he ever recorded.

Phife and Q-Tip had reconciled by the end. That much is clear from the record. Q-Tip's tribute verses on the album are full of grief and the kind of clean acknowledgment that you give to your closest collaborator after you have made it up. The Five Foot Assassin is gone. The catalog is permanent. If you want to remember him, "Buggin' Out" is a good place to start.