Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad stopped by Hot 97 to speak with Angie Martinez about the documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest, in theaters tomorrow. Following public feuds with director Michael Rapaport, Tip explained that they are in support of the film and that they eventually got the creative control they sought.
“If we hadn’t been supportive of the film, it wouldn’t be out. When I said that I wasn’t in support of it on Twitter, the director needed to respect the subject’s few requests that they had about the film artistically, an editing thing,” he explained. “Like I said before on MTV, it was more like a flare to get his attention, like, ‘Hello?’ because we were trying to get his attention. So we did it and then two days later, they were on a plane and came and worked on the edit.”
He also touched on recent comments that Rapaport made regarding Tip in the New York Daily News, saying that he was “completely done” with trying to appease. Tip didn’t take too kindly to his behavior.
“It was weird and lowbrow. We kinda been dealing with a lot of that stuff from him. They weren’t trying to really honor us as producers and we had some issues behind the scenes, in terms of the contracts and all of that stuff. And then because things weren’t all the way solid, we didn’t go to the Sundance Festival, which was the first festival. And when we didn’t go there, then he started going in the press and saying stuff and it got a little adversarial, stuff like you saw like the love letter that’s in the Daily News. Stuff like that was kinda like prevalent, but what can you do?”
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Despite all the back-and-forth, he doesn’t think Rapaport has ill intentions. “I think Mike is not a bad person at his core. It’s just he’s excited about it, it’s a passionate project, he’s a passionate dude. It’s his first outing as a director, so there’s some things. But it’s what it is right now. It’s definitely a certain story.”
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