Traffic Reporter Gives Phife Dawg an Awesome Tribute

News anchor gets in on the action, too
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 24, 2016 10:47 AM CDT

A Tribe Called Quest rapper Phife Dawg lived in Atlanta for more than a decade, and there are apparently at least a couple Quest fans at Atlanta's WSB-TV. After the rapper's death Wednesday, the station's traffic reporter, Mark Arum, worked an impressive number of Quest references into his traffic report. The video went viral and was shared by sites including the Daily Dot and BuzzFeed, who note some of the best call-outs:

  • "This rush hour comin' on with more hits than the Braves or the Yankees."
  • "Are things ludicrously speedy or infectious with the slow-mo?"
  • "[Interstate-]85 is stacked and packed now, heading into midtown Atlanta with a crash south of 400—tell your mother, tell your father, send a telegram."

  • Anchor Fred Blankenship even got in on the action, noting at one point, "Sometimes the definition of traffic comes sideways and straightways."
"Phife and Tribe were the soundtrack of my youth," Arum tells BuzzFeed. "I was crushed when I heard the news this morning just before we went on the air. I wanted to pay tribute to him somehow." He says he's been inserting hip-hop lyrics into his traffic reports for years, but he really "let them fly" Wednesday—he typically only includes one or two a show. Arum and Blankenship also discussed their love for A Tribe Called Quest in a Facebook video Thursday, with Blankenship expressing his amazement that Arum "dropped deep Tribe Called Quest lyrics, and then didn't short-change the traffic." (More viral video stories.)

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