Six years after his death, the first posthumous release from the A Tribe Called Quest rapper born Malik Taylor has been put out by his friends and associates. The result is a respectful record of throwback boom-bap beats with Taylor’s bars providing mostly thoughtful poetry over the top.
While it will likely hit its marks with existing A Tribe Called Quest fans, the fundamental content—Phife’s rapping—feels like it is stretched a little thin at times.
‘Forever’ has been assembled by Phife’s longtime business partner Dion Liverpool and, though there is little in the way of new sounds or approaches to the music, there are some memorable cuts that will likely land with new listeners, too.
Nutshell Pt. 2 (featuring Busta Rhymes and Redman) is one of the best—a spiky and memorable groover that allows for terrific interplay between the wordsmiths.
Wow Factor, a collaboration with De La Soul grandee Maseo, is also memorable, using a chopped up string sample alongside Phife rhymes that namedrop many of his heroes. It’s not particularly groundbreaking stuff, but does give an impression of the joy and generosity of the performer, and once again the multiple voices work well.
Less impressive are tracks such as Residual Curiosities (feat. Lyric Jones) and Round Irving High School, a spoken word piece starring Phife’s mother Cheryl Boyce-Taylor. It may seem churlish or even callous to knock this latter track—which is a heartfelt reminiscence on her late son—but the tone is a bit off and the production a little rote. There are some samples of Phife as a boy speaking with his mother towards the end, and it’s not nearly as affecting as it should be.
Posthumously assembled hip hop albums are a tricky sell. To digress too much from the artist’s body of work appears to miss the point: offering little for longtime fans and making the release potentially appear like freeloading. Match the late artist’s sound too closely, though, and you run the risk of simply offering up an ursatz approximation of what you think they wanted, with little artistic merit or new currency.
This record is in the latter category. Indeed, Liverpool has claimed that the album was already two-thirds finished before he got involved and, as such, it falls very much on the right side of decency. But it really doesn’t serve up anything new from Phife, who was a real hip hop pathfinder.
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