A Tribe Called Quest's Phife Dawg dies at 45
Rapper Malik Taylor, better known as Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest, died on Wednesday at the age of 45.
Though there are no details on Taylor's cause of death, the artist had battled Type 1 diabetes for years and had a kidney transplant in 2008, reports Rolling Stone.
Taylor was one of the co-founders of the Grammy-nominated group A Tribe Called Quest; he was known for the high-pitched voice that differentiated him from the rest of Tribe.
In fact, Taylor said that he "couldn't stand" listening to A Tribe Called Quest's debut album, "People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm," because he hated his voice back then even though one of the group's most famous tracks, "Can I Kick It," was on the album.
"It's hard for me to get into 'Can I Kick It?' ... for the simple fact that I hated my voice back then," he told Rolling Stone. "It was high-pitched and [speaks in high-pitched voice] 'Mr. Dinkins' and I couldn't stand it. It's hard to listen to that album because of my voice. It's almost like, thank God I was only on four records."
Taylor rapped on all five of the group's studio albums, and reunited with his group mates on "The Tonight Show" with Jimmy Fallon in November.
In January, he expressed a desire to go on tour with Tribe again, telling the AP, "These are my brothers. I know nothing but them. I only wanna work with them ... in terms of going on tour, I wanna go on tour with them."
He also bemoaned the current state of rap, saying, "Just a lot of laziness, whereas back when we were doing it everybody had their own lane. Nowadays it's one on top of the other. 'Oh, this sold three million with that style. Let me duplicate that style and run with it.' In order for us to see the future everybody can't sound like Future. Like, everybody sounds like Future. Like, I don't know even know who's who outside of Future."
