INTERVIEW - PHIFE DAWG, A TRIBE CALLED QUEST
Excerpts Published: Music Australia Guide #79, August 2010.
Fronting legendary New York crew A Tribe Called Quest alongside Q-Tip and DJ Ali Shaheed, diminutive rapper Phife Dawg (aka The Five Foot Assassin) is one of hip hop’s most influential figures. On the eve of Tribe’s inaugural Australian tour, he clues in MAG’s Dan Rule on overcoming personal struggles in his mission to immortalise rap’s golden era.
Hey, is that Phife?
“Who’s this?”
This is Dan Rule from Music Australia Guide in Melbourne. How you doing?
“I’m good. Hold on one second, hold on.”
Where are you living right now Phife?
“I’m living back and forth from Atlanta and the Bay Area, California. But right now, I’m in New York.”
Back home…
“Yeah, that’s right.”
It hasn’t really been widely publicised out here, but it seems like you’ve been through hell and back in the last few years, with the kidney transplant and going through dialysis and that whole process. I’d love you to take me through some of those last few years and what sort of brought you through.
“Man, basically my support system. I just took it one day at a time and I pretty much knew I was going to be back; I just had to be patient for once in my life and that’s the road I took, you know, and God and good at the end of the day.”
Sure. I mean, working and doing what you’re doing now, do you feel like you’re a very different man for having been through all that?
“Yeah, definitely. I’m much more humble. Well, I think I was always humble, but I’m much more humble and I learned how to be patient. I think that was my worst quality before the operation; I had no patience for anything. But nowadays I’m a lot more laid back and I kind of let things come to me instead of forcing the issue, you know.”
Talk me through Songs in the Key of Phife in that sense…
“I’m like three songs away from being done with the album. Like you said, it’s called Songs in the Key of Phife, Volume One: Cheryl’s Big Son, Elma’s Grandson. Originally it was just called Cheryl’s Big Son, but just last Wednesday evening I decided to name it Elma’s Grandson as well because that’s my grandmother and she passed away last Wednesday.”
I’m sorry about that man…
“Thankyou. The funeral’s tomorrow so I definitely had to include her because a lot of people have heroes, like Malcolm X – who’s one of my heroes as well – and Magic Johnson and different celebrities of that nature, but my grandmother is definitely one of my heroes bar none, you know what I mean? So I had to involve her one way or the other.”
“So like I said, I’m three songs away from being done and, you know, it’s a record for everybody man. There’s party records, there’s records where you get to evaluate your life and maybe what it should be, things of that nature. I’ve got the, I wouldn’t say ballad, but the little lovey-dove opening, you know, because I am a married man at the end of the day so I understand what it is to be loved and to love in general, you know. All them types of records are on there.”
“I’m definitely more mature than on the last solo album in 2000 or the last Tribe album in 1998, you know, so it’s definitely a grown man’s album, but I’m still definitely a kid at heart.”
I’ve heard you’ve got a whole different bunch of producers on there, even people like Madlib’s little brother Oh No?
“Yeah, I worked with Oh No, he did a track on the album; Ali Shaheed did a track on the album. I have a production company by the name of Riddim Kidz Incorporated and it consists of myself, DJ Rasta Root from out of Atlanta and my man Snack Box and he’s from out of San Jose, California, so Snack did about seven tracks, Rasta Root did about three and I did about two or three. Ill Mind did a track, Oh No did a track… I don’t want to forget anybody… Oh, a guy Bobby Ozuna, he did like two tracks as well.”
“So we had a bunch of fun making the album and in a few weeks we’ll be starting a compilation album because I have a host of artists that I need to put out there to the world.”
I’d heard that you’d been working on straight production for a while, but hadn’t been writing lyrics. What sparked you to begin writing again?
“Good question. Honestly, after taking ill and what have you, I really didn’t want to rhyme anymore. I was thinking about just producing and putting them out, and even after the transplantation took place, I was still in that mind frame where I didn’t want to rap anymore unless it was a Tribe album, you know, and I’ll just put out artists and produce. But then I took a trip to New York and got the bug, pretty much, you know what I mean? My man Khalil out here in New York, he’s our road manager and he’s got a company that is doing a compilation as well and he asked me to do a record for the compilation and I was just like ‘Aiight, play me some beats’ and he played me one beat and I was like ‘Yo, I like that one’. I wrote a verse or two for it and then pretty much just had the bug again.”
“The other person I have to credit to Michael Rapaport, because he kept telling me I needed to do another album as a soloist. He’s directing a documentary on A Tribe Called Quest and while he was filming that we would have different talks about it during breaks and whatever and I just began to think ‘Okay, I should have a little play around with it again’.”
“So it was a combination of going to New York, Michael Rapaport and one of my best friends from St Louis, Missouri telling me, basically, that I had to get back in tune with my music and things of that nature.”
I think one of the reasons people are so excited about seeing Tribe again is that there seems to have been a lull in terms of hip hop lyricism over the last decade. There’s a lot of exciting stuff happening in terms really interesting production crews – like what’s coming out LA at the moment with Flying Lotus, Ras G, Nosaj Thing and all those guys – but we sort of haven’t seen a kind of Native Tongues or Project Blowed or Anti-Pop Consortium rise up in what seems like a long time. Would you agree with that and, I guess, why?
“Honestly, the way I see it, life is a cycle and what comes around goes around. So I think what we represented in the late 80s and early 90s, it’ll come around again. I think you’ll see that kind of hip hop again where the vintage, so to speak, will reign supreme. And not even so much that it’s a competition or like we’re competing with the new school or anything like that, but I don’t think they understand the respect factor that’s supposed to be involved when you’re in this game. I think it’s a fly-by-night thing for them. This industry is so much of a ‘what have you done for me lately?’ type of industry that they overlook the longevity that one would want to have.”
“There’s no more groups like Earth, Wind and Fire, who came out with 200 albums, or The O’Jays or The Supremes or bands of that nature. And I’m not even talking about their brand of music, but their longevity in the game. And being that hip hop is the most fickle of all music – because you can be number one for two months then not heard from for the next 12 – so at the end of the day you have to at least honour your craft, do your best to put out good music and keep it coming. Unfortunately for us, we have to do so much, yet gain so little. It’s not like the NBA where they’re guaranteed their millions, you know. The fans are the reason we eat, so we have to be on top of our game.”
Sure…
“With these rap kids, it’s hit and miss, you know. It’s here on day, gone tomorrow. And they don’t seem to really care. It’s like ‘Lemme get this quick money and lemme just dash out’ and that’s not really helping the music.”
“It’s reminiscent of college basketball, college basketball being horrible because people want to go straight from high school to the league, although nowadays the rules state that you have to at least do a freshman year in college before you go to the league. But to me, that’s not only messing up the college game, it’s messing up the professional game as well because they’re really not learning how to play, you know what I mean? A lot of people will argue that that’s not true, because a lot of the greatest players in the game right now are Coby Bryant, who came straight from high school, Kevin Garnett came straight from high school, Tracey Mcgrady came straight from high school and the list goes on. But there are only two them walking around, not only with a lot of money, but championship rings.”
I’m following…
“I’m not saying that they don’t know how to play, it’s just the championships begin with the team’s front office and to me the front offices of these teams aren’t making wise decisions. They’re just going for the hype and running with it instead of just sitting there and really doing their homework.”
“Winning is a team effort! The front office has to think for the long haul. Everyone else is just thinking for the moment. This is the same thing with hip hop music, but with the artists. The labels really don’t even care anymore. You can look the label as the NBA front office and you can look at us as the players, and unfortunately in the rap business, the labels do not care anymore. They’re not looking for the next best thing; they’re looking for what they can pee back off of. ‘Oh, so and so went platinum with this style, you need to use that style because we’re trying to make this safe money’. They’re not trying to make good money, they’re trying to make safe money and a lot of it.”
Because they’re desperate…
“Exactly, and that’s what’s messing up the game.”
When you look back to the Golden Era, when you guys came up in New York, do you feel like the social and political contexts have changed shape so much now that the music will be forever different?
“I hope something will come up, but at the same time I kind of think it has passed because nobody want’s to do all of that thinking right now. Nobody wants to be told what to do or what should be done in their records or when they’re listening to music, you know. I think it’s better for hip hop to have balance and options. Okay, you have your select group of MCs who are strictly party, party, party, so when you go to the club you’re going to hear them and when you turn on the radio you’re only going to hear a certain calibre of rapper.”
“But back in the day, what was good about hip hop was… Let’s take the Juice Crew for example, one of the first of many crews, you had Kool G Rap who was like the criminal of the Juice Crew. He was NWA all by himself as far as we were concerned, you know what I’m saying, so he had his own way. Then you had Biz Markie who was like the funny guy of the crew, but he could rap his ass off. But you know, he was out to have a good time, so Biz Mark had his own thing. Then you had Masta Ace who was like the brainiac of the crew. Then you had Big Daddy Kane who was like the battle MC/ladies man. You could look at Big Daddy Kane and know that all the girls were sweating on him, boom-boom-boom-boom-boom, but you didn’t want to test him because you knew what he was capable of when it came to the battle rhyme, the metaphors and everything. So all you could do was respect him. Then Craig G, he was the freestyle fanatic and he would just battle you at the drop of a hat, wasn’t thinking about nothing, just spit off the top of the head, and that’s why he’s one of my favourite MCs because he didn’t need no pen and pad to get across what he needed to get across right then and there on the spur of the moment. That’s a great talent to have. Then Marley Marl, who’s one of the greatest producers of all time, as we know…”
“There’s no crews like that no more. Okay, Wu-Tang, yeah, but they’re also from the Golden Era, you know what I’m saying? There’s no more crews like that anymore. Nobody cares anymore, because as long as you’ve got one or two hits you’ll do alright, get nominated for a Grammy (laughs), you know?”
I’d love to ask what we can expect from the Tribe shows and whether you see what you’re doing at the moment as a sort of back-in-the-day reunion or something that has the potential to grow again. Do you think Tribe has unfinished creative business?
“I do, I do personally. I absolutely do. I don’t know whether it’s going to come to fruition though. That’s the only thing I can’t answer. As far as the show, I have not idea what to expect. But that’s kind of how we perform. We don’t really discuss it too much. We rehearse every once in a while. It’s like, two guys live in Jersey, one lives in Atlanta and I live in California most of the time now, so a lot of the time we don’t even discuss it. We just get onstage and handle our business. A lot of the time, that’s the best way for us. Once that music comes on it’s like 1998 all over again.”
Tribe’s relationship to jazz is one of the key things that we all talk about. This freedom of expression and fluidity that perhaps wasn’t there in a lot of hip hop. What do you think of as Tribe’s legacy in that sense?
“I’ve never really thought about it. That’s something that I want to supporters to define, at the end of the day. I don’t really sit there and think, ‘Well I hope the figure this out about us’ (laughs), ‘I hope our legacy is this or that’. I’m just happy to be wanted by the masses. I personally think that that’s nothing but a blessing because we haven’t done a studio album together since 1998, it’s now 2010, and they’re still wanting us to do shows, they’re still wanting us to do albums and that’s a blessing. I personally think that we need to absorb that and count our blessings every day and embark on that.”
“So we’ll see what happens.”
Visit: atribecalledquest.com
