“From sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, your mind had to be on nobody but God,” says Phife Dawg, remembering weekends at his grandmother’s house growing up, in last year’s documentary about A Tribe Called Quest, Beats, Rhymes and Life. “So I had to sneak and watch Soul Train. I had to sneak and watch Scooby Doo, or whatever cartoon was popping off at the time. But when it came to the block parties and the hip hop, once I saw them grabbing mics and getting busy, I risked my livelihood, getting kicked out of the house and everything, just to be a part of it.”

So how did this hip-hop legend, who lived for his music, go on to be the same one who later said, “I love hip-hop, but at the rate its going right now, I could do with or without it?”

That’s the strange story of Phife Dawg, who performs at Axis Nightclub in Santa Clara this Friday. Growing up in Queens as Malik Taylor, he was not just one of the founding members of Tribe, but the common demominator of the group, the one who basically brought them all together. His childhood best friend and fellow MC Q-Tip jumped out front to become the recognizable voice of Tribe on their first album, but on their second, 1991’s The Low End Theory, Phife started to emerge as an MC, especially on “Check the Rhime,” one of their most famous songs. By their next, 1993’s Midnight Marauders, the interplay between Q-Tip and Phife was an integral part of their sound.

After the group broke up, Phife put out one solo album in 2000, but the follow-up has been delayed by over a decade as he dealt with crippling health problems culminating in a kidney transplant in 2008. While Michael Rapaport’s 2011 documentary is far from the definitive statement about Tribe, it seems to have at least re-ignited Phife’s career—he was the only member of the group to stand behind it and even tour around it.

Phife’s show is one of the first from Alan Lim and Johnny Caron, who as Avant Productions have started booking shows at Axis Nightclub in conjunction with longtime DJ Dave Dynamix. So far, they’ve been on a roll, bringing the kind of bigger hip-hop shows that the South Bay has never really had a spot for. Last weekend, Axis had a “Legends” show featuring pioneering Bay Area turntablists Q-Bert, D-Styles and Shortkut of Invisibl Skratch Piklz.

DJ Amy Robbins does a great show on KSJS with Badcat on Thursdays, featuring what she calls “dirty robot sex music.” They are maybe the most overcaffeinated duo on the dial, rattling the halls of San Jose State with yelps and screams and all kinds of ridiculous ramblings.

But Robbins’ agro silliness can’t hide the fact that she has a keen ear for the pop-dance gems that are often lost in the overly fractured, ever-shifting electronic subgenres. Like the original AM disc jockeys who plucked the hookiest songs out of obscurity and made rock ‘n’ roll into good radio, she mines the electro frontier not for its artiest or most technically accomplished statements, but for the rush of its most insistent should-be hits.

In this age of endless hot girls going DJ, the 22-year-old Robbins is unfortunately probably better known for having been on the 49ers Gold Rush cheer squad, but hey, in this day and age, you gotta take the followers where you can get ‘em.

Robbins will spin this Saturday at the “100% Recession Proof” DJ event at Axis Nightclub in Santa Clara. Also in the lineup will be SF’s DJ Playboi and headliner DJ Fabian from Vegas. A former Bay Area DJ best known for his residencies at XS and Tryst in Sin City, he’s also a producer for the Crooklyn Clan remix label.

This is the latest event from DJ Sy-ence, who’s been the resident DJ at Axis since it opened in May. The huge club’s three different rooms have allowed him to present everything from EDM to hip-hop to reggae, sometimes all at the same time.

100% RECESSION PROOF will be held Saturday, July 14 at Axis Nightclub in Santa Clara, beginning at 10:30pm. Cover is $5 until 11:30pm, $10 until midnight, $15 midnight-4am.