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Listen to Kendrick Lamar, André 3000, Pharrell & More Honor Phife Dawg on Q-Tip’s Abstract Radio

NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 27: Recording artist Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest visits the Tribeca Film Festival 2011 portrait studio on April 27, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

Q-Tip‘s weekly Abstract Radio show Friday night was a special tribute to his A Tribe Called Quest band mate Phife Dawg, who died Tuesday due to complications with diabetes. The two-hour episode included a collection of the group’s hits, deep cuts, rarities and tributes from some of hip-hop’s top acts, as Complex reports, making for a fitting tribute to Tip’s fallen friend and collaborator.

In the episode, Pharrell, Just Blaze, Kendrick Lamar, André 3000, Big Boi and Chuck D all weighed in on Phife Dawg’s impact on their lives and careers.

Listen to it in full here:

“The world lost Phife, but Phife himself actually gained the universe. He is now with the master, entrenched and enmeshed in the best chords…in heaven,” Pharrell said.

Lamar said, “Me being one of the new cats, all I can remember is either listening to gangster rap or Low End Theory. So it’s only right that I pay homage to Phife and Tribe. If I go back to being 5, 6 years old, I remember being acquainted with the legendary, and it was a record by the name of ‘Scenario.’ The flow was crazy, the beat was crazy, but one line stuck out out me in particular the…the line in particular: ‘I’m all that and then some short dark and handsome / Bust a nut inside your eye, to show you where I come from.’

“I just thought that line was witty at the time you feel me being a kid as six years old. I’m short myself so I was rocking that way. Being witty and crafty as possible, and that’s exactly what he did with that line. There’s many many many more but that was my first time ever being excited hearing Phife. Much love to him and his family everything that you’ve done for the culture everything that you’ve done for hip hop we will always hold it down for Phife.”

And André 3000 went in at length about Phife and Tribe’s influence on his life.

“A Tribe Called Quest is everything, everything to me,” he said. “There will not be no Outkast without A Tribe Called Quest…. I remember me and Big Boi were out trying to get a deal and become Outkast. We went through a few managers and producers to come up and be something, and our last stop on the trip was to see Organized Noize. We went up to his job and we went out to his car…he actually pulled out A Tribe Called Quest cassette…and that’s what we used to rhyme over. So when we met Organized Noize, that was our first demo off what we could do. We just let the tape go and just rapped, no choruses or nothing. We were just rapping rapping rapping rapping in the parking lot. It’s so crazy that Tribe was so integral in what we’re doing and what we are and anted to be. We’d sit around and listen to it and feel special. A lot of kids in our high school weren’t listening to Tribe. Even though they were on TV it was like a prejudice kind of thing..some people in our HS felt like we were the weirdos cause we listened to Tribe and De La and Puba. Yeah it was like ‘it’s us….’ I think everything they presented to use, form the visuals to the sound which, to this day, man there’s no one greater than Tribe, period. We can have all the discussions you want to, it don’t matter.”