Phife Dawg (A Tribe Called Quest) dies

Why it matters

Malik Taylor, who recorded as Phife Dawg in A Tribe Called Quest, died on March 22, 2016, of complications from diabetes. He was 45. He had been openly Type-1 diabetic since 1990 and had received a kidney transplant in 2008. The illness was, in a quiet way, the long-running background of his life. Phife was the Five-Foot Assassin. He was Q-Tip's primary foil across every classic Tribe album from The Low End Theory forward. The chemistry between the two of them (Tip's higher smoother flow, Phife's lower funnier denser one) is one of the great MC partnerships in rap, on the same shelf as Run and DMC, or Method Man and Redman, or Q-Tip and Phife. Tribe had been mostly inactive as a group since the late 90s, but Phife's death in 2016 catalyzed the recording of one final Tribe album, We Got It from Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, which was released eight months later with Phife's vocals from sessions he had completed before his death. You can hear him on it. He is rapping with the same focus as ever. He was 45.