Poet Cheryl Boyce Taylor talks with tenderness, humor and wrenching honesty about raising, being raised by, and losing her son Malik, whom you and I know as the legendary Phife Dawg from the seminal hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest.

This profound, uplifting, and touching double-length episode offers—through an open conversation between two longtime friends of different generations—Cheryl’s experience of grieving through the holy trinity of poetry, therapy and community; The blessings and challenges of sharing a private loss with the world; Parenting a bold artist as a bold artist; And a series of only-a-mother-would-know stories.

The episode also includes Cheryl sharing poems from her poetic archive “Mama Phife Represents,” (Haymarket Books, 2021) and the episode opens with a collaborative poem recorded live at New York City’s The Bowery Poetry Club by Cheryl and Phife​​—never before released to the public.