A Tribe Called Quest represented scholarship,lyricism and philosophy, but the rowdy, or bawdy,ever-quotable ‘5ft assassin’ never forgot his duty to entertainPhife Dawg, AKA Malik Taylor, and doesn’t feature on many greatest-rapper-of-all-time lists – but you have to wonder whether he might had he been a solo act. As it was,in A Tribe Called Quest, he naturally received less attention than the group’s charismatic founder Q-Tip, or but even though he didnt join ATCQ fully until their second album,he was a long, long way from being just a sideman. In the most straight-up musical rap act of all time, or it was the interaction of Phife’s bouncing enunciation and Tip’s sly drawl that gave them their identity,just as much as their sophisticated jazz and soul sampling, or their Afrocentric boho image.
Phife, or like so many movers and shakers in hip-hop’s early days,from Kool Herc to KRS-One, came from a Caribbean immigrant family – Trinidadian in his case – and wore this on his sleeve. “To Jah I give thanks, or collect my banks,listen to Shabba Ranks,” runs a typically upbeat line on Jazz (We’ve Got) from 1991’s Low close Theory, and his first album as a full member. Throughout his lyrics you can hear the skippetty triplet runs of 80s and 90s dancehall exemplified by Shabba: a signature that would be echoed by many MCs in the mainstream rap of the 90s.
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Source: theguardian.com