Sprechen Sie Deutsch? It may help if you want to follow Phife Dawg's solo career. Phife a.k.a. Malik the Five Foot Freak a.k.a. Mutty Ranks hasplans for a mid-summer official release of his first 12-inch solo joint,"Bend Over." Produced by Jay Dee of the Ummah (the production clique responsible for much of Tribe's later work), the single updates the art of moving butts as it follows Phife over the landscape of Atlanta's booty-shaking club scene.

Here's the catch: "Bend Over" isn't yet being released stateside. The white label single is being licensed and distributed in Europe and Japan through a joint venture with Ramos Productions in New York City and Groove Attack, the German distribution company. That means that hip-hop fans abroad will be rocking to Phife's freaky-deaky rhymes before U.S. heads.

Which is fine with Phife. The 28-year-old MC quietly continues to finish his debut solo album and is taking his time to ink a deal with a major label. Reached at his Atlanta home, Phife explained: "Basically, a lot of labels are on some real flaky shit. So, the best thing to do is to drop white labels here and there, just to get the buzz out there." Apparently, cultivating interest overseas is old hat for Phife. "It all started in Europe for A Tribe Called Quest anyway, before it came to the U.S. on the college tip," says Phife, referring to the days in 1989, before the Native Tongues took over college airwaves and introduced rap to the mainstream market, changing the face of hip hop forever. "If I have to go that route as a soloist, that's fine."

After ten years in and out of the spotlight, Phife's priorities are clear."The gold, the platinum records, I've done all that (with ATCQ)," he says. Indeed, Tribe's 1997 LP, Beats, Rhymes, and Life debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart. But for Phife, that's all in the past. "This time around," he says, "I'm trying to make a little money, but it's really on some love shit."

When the group broke up in 1998, fans worldwide feared hearing no more from the Midnight Marauders, who won "Group of the Year" in The Source's first annual hip-hop awards in 1994. And while fans may never hear them together again, the individual members have stayed busy. Former frontman Q-Tip justreleased a single entitled "Vivrant Thing" for the Violator compilationalbum, Violator The Album and is working on a solo record for Arista. Ali Shaheed Muhammad did production work on the new Eric Benet album, A Day In The Life.

KNOX ROBINSON