One Last Spin With Phife Dawg, Hip-Hop’s Ultimate Sports Fan

Phife Dawg, with his distinctive voices, had the best sports references in the rap game and he gifted us a with more gems on A Tribe Called Quest's new album.

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Image via Getty/Gabriel Olson

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The first sports reference came on the second song. A Tribe Called Quest’s first album in 18 years dropped Friday and on “We The People…”, one of the most serious and political songs on the 16-track We Got it From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service, it was quintessential Phife. Slyly dropping a line about some team and some player that, if you’re a sports fan, was guaranteed to make you smile.

“Boy, I tell you that's vision
Like Tony Romo when he hitting Witten
The Tribe be the best in they division”

Vintage Tribe, vintage Phife—rhyming about sports the way Q-Tip used to spit lines about macking girls. And while he wasn’t the first MC to drop a ton of sports references, Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor may have been the best.

Plenty of others in the game have rhymed about the world of sports and plenty of other MCs were more talented— guys like Jay Z, Drake, and (don’t @ me) Action Bronson, who, for my money, might have the most obscure and ridiculous ones out there of all. But who else has ever dropped them as casually, as cheerfully, as seamlessly, or as hilariously as Phife?

 

Whether it was rhyming about Tribe comin’ with more hits than the Braves and the Yankees or Vinny Testaverde’s errant passes or having the complexion of a hockey puck, the references were always out of left field. But Phife was on point. Especially when he rhymed about point guards.   

Listed at 5’3”, who else in rap could relate to the smallest guys on the court the way Phife could? That’s why “Runnin mad games as if your name was Scott Skiles" is the kind of lyric only a hardcore NBA fan and/or point guard aficionado would appreciate. He gave two more floor generals love on We Got it From Here’s “Dis Generation”:

“In the box with the capital G, balling the beat
Status, Chris Paul and John Wall in the league”

Everyone has a favorite Phife sports reference. And if you’re a Jets and Knicks fan, you’ve got a ton to choose from. Two of Phife’s favorite squads got numerous shoutouts during his run and both paid their respects when he sadly passed away in March at age 45. After a 10-6 season that saw them just miss the playoffs, chances are Phife was hyped about the Jets heading into 2016. Because who else in rap would give us a Todd Bowles reference like Phife did on “Dis Generation”?

“…been waiting for a Jets title since last
Picture Todd-Todd Bowles, Gang Green on that ass”

Completely random, authentically Phife.

In a previous career, I was lucky enough to run into Q-Tip every once in awhile and chat him up about the music he was working on. But he would always light up when the subject turned to the Knicks. I never got the chance to do the same with Phife because as much as Q-Tip could get wrapped up about the Knicks and the pros and cons of re-signing Jeremy Lin, imagine the debates a sports fan could have had with Phife? About any sport, any team, any player, any organization.

New Tribe will be bumping all day and all weekend long. And we’ll tip our cap to Phife every time we hear him do what he did best. 

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