When Michael Rapaport's documentary lens captured the behind-the-scenes drama between members of iconic rap group A Tribe Called Quest, his subjects took to the media to voice their discontent. But by the time Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest premiered at Sundance, Tribeca, and won the Audience Award at the L.A. Film Fest, Rapaport had earned all but one Tribe member's public support.
In its opening weekend, Beats, Rhymes & Life earned $111,982 in only four theaters, notching an impressive $27,996 per screen average. As it expands into more cities in its second week, the doc has already grossed an estimated $299,000 and counting.
Movieline sat down in Los Angeles with ATCQ's Phife Dawg (AKA Malik Taylor), the only member of the group who had supported the documentary since its Sundance debut, to discuss his take on the public exposure of Tribe's private personal drama. Minutes into our conversation, Jarobi White joined us, in town for the film's premiere -- a pleasant surprise that took the chat into frank discussion of the film ("It's a good movie"), how the hip-hop community has changed for the worse, and why both Phife and Jarobi turned to their respective first loves (sports and cooking) while the future of A Tribe Called Quest remains up in the air.
There's so much honesty and love for Tribe Called Quest in the film -- what were your expectations of the project when you first got the call? You were the last member to sign off on it, right?
Phife: Mmm hmm.I didn't really know what to expect, but I thought there aren't a lot of rap groups that can say they have a documentary done about them, so my attitude was like, "Shoot, why not?" I'm sure there are a lot of people that would like to take our place. I felt like we should all embrace it.
Was this the first time you had all been approached to do a documentary?
Phife: That I know of, at least. I think somebody mentioned it a while back but it never materialized and we never thought twice about it. But this time, you know, it came to fruition, so everybody was cool with it.
Was the fact that Michael Rapaport was an actor and someone you knew beforehand make that decision easier?
Phife: Yeah, well he had already had a relationship with Q-Tip for a while, 12, 13 years or whatever. I met him back in like 2006 -- really sat down and had a conversation while we were at a Knicks-76ers game, and that's how I got to know him a little bit. But I really didn't get to know him until we started filming.
[Jarobi enters the room to greet Phife.]
Jarobi: Hi! Hi, Malik. [Laughs] What'cha talking about?
Please join us! Well, I was at the Rock the Bells concert where, in the film, cameras capture conflict backstage between Phife and Q-Tip, and most fans were probably unaware of the complexities and dynamics behind the scenes. Did that make it a tough decision, to allow a camera into that inner circle?
Phife: I guess so, but you know, it's a documentary. When I hear the word "documentary," I don't think certain things should be left out. You've got to keep it 100 percent as much as you can, unless your group has a meeting beforehand and says, "Yo -- don't say this, 'cause boom, boom, boom." Other than that, it's a documentary so let's document, you know what I mean?
Are you guys happy with the final film?
Phife: I thought it came out good.
Jarobi: Yeah, it's a good movie.
There was a highly publicized back in forth in the media around the time of the film's Sundance debut in which members of Tribe voiced their dissatisfaction with the project; can you elaborate on those feelings, and what may have changed since then?
Jarobi: I think just like in dealing with our music, we put our all into our music and our music is very truthful. We're about truth, and we're about the music. I think we wanted more music stuff, you know what I mean? Because our fans are a certain kind of fan and they want to see that nerdy stuff, like, "How do you make that beat?" After being with us, Michael had his vision, we had our vision of what we wanted it to be. And it was, you know, grown men hashing it out. Unfortunately, it spilled out to the media. Usually those things happen behind the scenes, you know what I mean? But, you know, people got mad and started, I guess, venting to the public, which put it on front street, which I didn't really like.
I can understand how difficult it would be to be the subject of such focus and then have that story, the personal conflict, come out without having control of any filter of what gets out.
Jarobi: Well, see -- I think people are getting the wrong idea, like we're trying to hide something. This stuff is our life, there's nothing to hide. It's just that we wanted a better balance. The balance wasn't to our liking, and that was our main problem. And I think originally, in seeing the movie -- if you were ever to hang around us, dude, it's not that heavy. To seem like we're heavy dudes... I mean, we're heavy, but we bug out! Spend an hour around us and you'll probably laugh for 45 minutes. And the movie didn't really reflect that to my liking, but you know, that's life.
One of the great positive elements in the film is all the love between you guys, especially you two.
Jarobi: Well, this is my brother. There's no way to get around it. From the first two weeks that we met or whatever, we've kind of been together the whole time since 12 years old. That's how it is.
How do you both see the landscape of hip-hop having changed over the years, especially with a film like this, which teaches a new generation about the Native Tongues movement?
Jarobi: When we, in our time and our little place and our little section of hip-hop, it was the streets dictating to everybody else what was going on. Now somebody gets a popular song or whatever and it's become very formulaic. I guess it's just the nature of intellectual minds to try and analyze stuff, and make algorithms -- okay, variable x, y, and z connect and that's a song! So people just shoot for that automatically instead of just pouring out their hearts, like we do. We weren't concerned about records sales, nothing like that. When we walked out of the studio and were met by other rappers, because it was a big community in our day, we wanted them to be like, "Yo, you've got the flyest stuff out of everybody." That's all we want.
What was great about that whole movement was that you all guested on one another's tracks, and it all seemed like such a collaborative community. Do you still feel that exists now?
Phife: It can, but there's so much hating going on nowadays that it's few and far between.
Jarobi: I think that type of thing is a little harder to do nowadays. When everybody comes up with these posses and these crews -- I hate to call people out -- but these crews, it seems very contrived. We just met. It was like, "I like what you do." "I like what you do." "Hey, we have a studio session -- why don't you guys come through?" "Okay, we'll come to the studio session!" It literally started from there. It's not like, "Yo, have my manager call you, we need to collaborate on some records, I'll have my agent call you." No, it wasn't like that. It was just the three groups, plus Monie, Latifah, Brand Nubians, we were all of like minds and wanted to hang out together, and that's all. We weren't concerned with, "Who's the most popular? I've got to have three De La Soul songs on my album for it to sell."
Tribe and that group of musicians always seemed different in that way.
Jarobi: Yeah.
Phife, you mentioned there are more haters in rap now -- what do you mean?
Phife: Same thing Jarobi just said, you've got to go through this person and go through that person and they might really want to say no.
Do you figure that comes from rap becoming commercial?
Jarobi: It has a lot to do with it.
Phife: And being gassed. [Laughs] Getting a big head and stuff like that, until they're brought down to size. But I'm not even saying it to be disrespectful, it's just how it is right now. There are certain people I know I could reach out to and do a nice record with and it wouldn't be forced or anything like that. But as Jarobi said, you don't want to just rock with somebody because they're the hottest thing right now. That becomes old really quick.
Jarobi: You've got to have some synergy, you've got to feel something.
It's interesting to have the both of you here together, because you both eventually pursued outside passions -- cooking and sports. So is there less of an immediate impulse for you to continue with music and make more Tribe albums?
Jarobi: I mean, there's always an immediate necessity to create. And I think we just found other avenues. Unfortunately, the four of us weren't in the same place and the same time to be in the studio making a record worthy of the records that we've made before. So that's why it hasn't happened yet, period.
Phife: It's up in the air, as far as we're recording.
Jarobi: Can never say no.
Phife: Can never say no, but I don't want to say yes and it doesn't happen and I don't want to say no and it happens real quick. As far as my love for sports and his love for cooking, if I may answer that, the grass always looks greener on the other side, and those were our first loves, respectively.
Jarobi: It sounds crazy being as young as we had started but rap was kind of a second thing --
Phife: And we did it for fun! It just turned into livelihood. But sports and cooking? He taught me everything I know about cooking, and I taught him everything he knows about basketball!
Now I'm getting hungry.
Jarobi: Yeah, you got a kitchen?
Phife: I'm getting hungry for NBA season!
Phife, I hear you might be interested in pursuing acting in the near future.
Phife: A little bit. I think my focus is more on being a sports broadcaster, more so than anything else. But if they came to me with a script and I liked it, I'm not turning down anything but my collar. I might turn the collar up, due to character! [Laughs]
Jarobi: I guarantee if he had a venue to do his own half and hour spot...
Phife: I'm doing it right now! It's called The Fanalyst and we do it every Thursday. Right now, I've been doing press and my partner's in New York so I'll call in and give my take on certain things in the world of sports. But once all this is said and done, we'll be doing the split screen, we'll be doing the Skype thing. It's gonna be crazy.
Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest is currently in limited release.