This day in Hip-hop caters two iconic artists celebrating their day of birth: Mike D and Phife Dawg—both respectively renowned in their well-characterized careers and for the significant impact they've punctuated in rap music altogether.
First of the two is Michael Diamond (Mike D for short) and is best known as one-thirds of the legendary rap group, the Beastie Boys, who along with Adam “MCA” Yauch and Adam “Ad-Rock” Horovitz, ushered in a new era for Golden Age Hip-hop.
Following their experimental rap radio-hit “Cooky Puss”, Diamond and the boys made their memorable debut with their groundbreaking record Licensed To Ill, which apart from its extensive list of awards, accolades, and chart-topping numbers, fans and critics alike have named it an imminent Hip-hop classic and legendary record. The album recently celebrated its 25th year on November 15 this year.
Apart from his celebrated career with the rap group, Rolling Stone reported Diamond “making new stuff again,” to which the Hip-hop icon announced multiple projects, such as producing for American Rock band, Portugal and English punk collective, Slaves, as well as releasing several remix tapes.
Also celebrating today is A Tribe Called Quest's Phife Dawg (Malik Izaak Taylor), who alongside Q-Tip, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and Jarobi White, formed another landmark rap group born out of the Golden Age. It was during this era that Taylor was nick-named “Five Foot Assassin”, prominent for such fearless hard-hitting rhymes flowing furiously from a man standing five feet and three inches.
Phife Dawg's feat is most evident on the tribe's sophomore album The Low End Theory, wherein the Five Footer stirred razor-edge rap flurries out of social and political maladies inherent within mainstream media at that time.
Earlier this year, Hip-hop reeled at the announcing of the iconic tribesman's passing at the age of forty-five. Nevertheless, the tribe just released their latest and final album, We Got It From Here... Thank You 4 Your Service, which garnered an imminent Saturday Night Live special performance, with the Five Foot Assassin himself making an artwork appearance as his some of his final verses played through the radio—proof that the legacy of Phife Dawg will forever continue throughout the realm of Hip-hop.
By Jods Arboleda for RAPStation.com
