News of the passing of Hip-Hop icon Phife Dawg last week rocked not only his fans and peers in Hip-Hop, but also people who you’d least expect to know who he was. Kobe Bryant definitely knew of the 5 Foot Assassin and in a post-game interview last Friday (March 25) the Black Mamba called the tragic event “the passing of a legend.”
Bryant praised the Queens MC saying, “He made timeless music. It’s very hard nowadays, with music being so in the moment, what they’ve been able to do is make music that stands the test of time. You can release a Tribe album and it’s just as relevant and hot now as it was then. That speaks to the attention to detail, the genius of their craft.”
And like most of today’s older Hip-Hop fans, Bryant found nostalgic feelings whenever listening to 90’s music like that of A Tribe Called Quest, “I always listen to music that brought me back to a moment in time because I think the game is such an emotional one, I always tend to listen to music that brought me to a moment in time in which I had a certain emotion, whether it was high school, or as a kid in Italy or the first few years in the league, whether it was calm, whether it was excitement. That’s what music does for me. It’s not just listening to music just to listen to music, but whatever music’s gonna put me in the right emotional setting that I feel is important for that day.”
In a year where Hip-Hop loses an icon as does the NBA with the retiring of Kobe Bryant, we have to remember to appreciate what these stars give us day in and day out before we’re left grieving in the wake of their departure.
Check the video of Kobe’s comments on Phife’s passing below.
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Photo: screen cap
