Last week I got to talk to Q-tip at the Hennessey offices on 10th Avenue. I brought a BlackBook intern with me, Alice Urmey, who asked way better questions than I did. It’s kind of embarrassing. The summer brings the brightest young people looking for experience in fields where they might pursue a career. It is always refreshing to be a part of the process. PR gal Suzanne Matulay showed us the Hennessy offices as we waited for Q-Tip, who was coming from a studio session with Kanye West. Q-Tip is one of the industry's real gentlemen. It was great to sit and chat with him. The relationship between corporate sponsors and nightlife and music has been going on for decades. Brands like Hennessy make impossible things possible with their loot and enthusiasm. Years ago, brands would throw you a few bucks and paste tacky posters all over your joint. I remember telling one sponsor that the people and their tacky poster wouldn’t stand a chance of getting into my joint. Brands have become more savvy, more in touch with the street, the art, and the music. This collaboration between Q-Tip and Hennessy reflects that growth.

You are the curator for this year’s Hennessy Artistry series, which is a “blending of art, culture, and music.” You’re going to be touring four cities, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, and New York City, with the Roots and right now you’re in the process of curating the shows that will appear in these cities. I understand each city has a specific talent, but you and the Roots are traveling throughout. What kind of people are you looking for in each city? What will be the difference between Chicago and Detroit, Miami, and New York City? Obviously, when you go from one city to the other you want to start off with the home-grown talent, people that are indigenous to the area. That’s usually the starting point. But we’re not necessarily tied into that concept. It could go as what people traditionally listen to in Detroit. If it’s a house thing, we’ll get a house guy. Those things are all fair game, we’re just trying to make each one different than the other.

I’ve heard you DJ. The music that you put out and want people listening to is a combination of many genres of music. You haven’t been locked down to any single type. I guess this will be reflected in the show. What about art? When you say it’s a curation of art, I’m a little confused about that. Are you involved in the art, or is the brand curating the art? It’s an Americans For the Arts trust fund. The artists, the Roots and Q-Tip, will be part of that. And a $10,000 grant will go towards each of the local artists.

Now that you’re a musical guy, what about art? Who are some of the artists that you own or visit in at museums. I love art. I love a lot of artists. From Picabia, to Klimt, to Basquiat, to Matisse, the normals. Then there’s a lot of new artists, up and coming, that I check out. I go to the Dietch sometimes, or I’ll just check some stuff out. So I’m pretty tuned in, I’m what you would call a beginner in that world.

So Hennessy is giving you this opportunity, they’re paying for it, they’re associating your brand with their brand. You’re an extremely busy man right now. You’re doing an album with Universal Motown. Well, I’m signed there. I’m always working on music, but I haven’t started on it yet. I mean I have it going, but I’m still doodling around.

You’re writing a book for Random House. What is the book about? Is it about you? Well, kind of loosely. It’s called Industry Rules, because we had a song in A Tribe Called Quest where the line I said was, “Industry rule number 4080: record company people are shady.” So it’s kind of based off of that. It’s me giving little anecdotes based off of things I’ve been through, or experiences I’ve been through. Like I may have, “Industry rule number 50: when you’re going into life, make sure that Steve is your boy.” [laughs] You know what I mean? And then here you’ll have like a whole thing, or something like that.

So it’s the rules that will help you get through life. It’s like Q-Tip’s Guide to the Galaxy. You’re working with Mark Ronson, that’s an old and longstanding relationship. I don’t want to say old like in stale, You guys have been DJing together for years. Tell me how you and Mark hooked up working together, how does it go in and out? Mark is a dear friend of mine, obviously you know that. He’s just a straight shooter, and he’s just a great guy. And we’ve worked together, DJed together, we share a lot of the same likes. And we kind of have the same philosophy musically. So this is not our first time hooking up. You know that’s my boy. We’ll go get a bite to eat, and I feel like when you do that, that’s somebody who quantifies that thing being your boy. So were definitely friends, and he’s just a talented dude. So I had a great time working on the Bang Bang Bang song with him.

You’ve collaborated with Kanye West, who I understand you were with twenty minutes ago. Kanye West is a person who the world looks at in many different ways. For a very long time he was respected, and then he went in and out, and many people are confused by it. I have a lot of experience with celebrities, and sometimes, what the public sees is not the real thing. So when we talk about Kanye West, many peoples’ eyes roll, many people say he’s cool, he got an unfair shake, or you’re not understanding where he’s coming from. Tell me about what it’s like to hang out with him. Yeah he gets an unfair shake. He’s a very misunderstood person, but he’s extremely talented. He’s kind of like a savant in his approach, but the difference is that he’s not deaf in any area. He’s wildly intelligent.

No one has ever doubted that the man is one of the most talented people to come along in years. But it’s the way he expresses himself, or the way he’s perceived in public. Every single person I’ve ever met who has met you has said, that man is so down to earth, he’s so easy to talk to, he’s just like talking to one of us, and you are a celebrity in your own right. Kanye, on the other hand, gets this rap of not being a person to talk to. But you say that’s the bad rap. I guess God winds people up different ways.

That’s a great line. I don’t know, but when you sit with him, I enjoy working with him. We’re going to be doing a lot more stuff. From working with him I’ve definitely learned a lot. He’s very insightful and I can’t wait for everybody to hear his stuff. We’re going to continue to work together, he’s a great guy.

I read you’re doing a play about Miles Davis. And Nelson George is the writer and director. I met Miles a few times, and he was an unbelievable person. In fact, a misunderstood person. He had a reputation for having a bad temper. Which maybe he did, but I never saw it. He did a fashion show, he modeled for me once and we had a dinner party that he attended. I had one of his jackets I wore around until it fell apart.Where do you come to Miles Davis? Well I had the opportunity to meet him a couple times, to speak to him. And just on the periphery, he’s always been around in my life, vis a vis my dad, who was this huge jazz buff. There’s differences in jazz. You have the traditional, straight-ahead big band, and then you have beep bop , and hard bop. My dad was more of a hard bop kind of guy, which was a bluesy interpretation of beep bop. And Miles kind of straddled the fence between beep bop and hard bop. So that was one of my dad’s favorites, and I heard it around the house all the time. Just grew up around it. And then when I became an artist, and started doing this and moved in circles and met him, it was just like wow, crazy. And I just identify with him in a lot of ways as an artist.

What is your role? Miles.

I saw you in a movie recently, playing a drug dealer. you were very good, believable, by the way. Now you’re going to play Miles Davis. That’s a much less familiar role. One’s a street guy that you might be aware of, and you only met Miles a few times. Is acting obligatory? Do all musicians do it, Diddy did it, so therefore you did it? It’s kind of a weird thing, because a lot of my peers who jumped from the music to the acting, they may be fair at it, but you can tell that it’s not something that’s studied, or there are other things at play there. But with me, I’m a cinephile, I love films. All of the arts are interlocked, or tied together for me. Like if I’m going to do the acting thing, I’m going to study it. And I’ve studied acting for like ten years. It’s something that I’m going to take seriously, and approach like I do my music. It’s not just like a flash in the pan for me. Because my dad, he was in the Korean conflict, so he was of a different era. So I grew up around a lot of the cultural trinkets that he was used to. So I saw Rita Moreno, and Frank Sinatra, and Jackie Gleason, and Lena Horne, and Dorothy Dandridge. These people that I’m mentioning, they’re double and triple threats. They had acting, singing, performance. They did it all. And that’s the thing I grew up around. So I’ve always wanted to do that.

(Alice Urmey) Do you see the combination of these different artistic outlets similar to the way in which you fuse the different genres of hip hop, and rap, and jazz in your music? In a way, because I feel like the duty of art for me is to be able to express myself as clearly as possible. To get one expression across to people as clearly as possible. So whatever medium can get that done, I think it’s to your arsenal. If you respect the medium, and you’re involved in it, and you’re able to do it. Whether you’re an artist, someone putting together and designing clubs, or if you’re a writer, or if you’re doing a play, you’re trying to relate to people. Some sort of commonality between you, the performer, the artist, and the audience. So the way that I’ve intertwined and fused jazz, and rock, and hip hop, it’s the same thing with the different mediums of art for me.

(AU) Do you think that there are other contemporary artists that blend the genre lines in the same way that you do? Will Smith. Queen Latifah is another example. She starting out rapping, then acting, now singing. Justin Timberlake. These are people who are doing it all, and doing it in a respectable serious way, but having fun with it.

At what stage is the play? Is it coming out soon, is it a long way away? It’s a ways away. We’re just getting it off the ground, and we’re having a couple readings. We’re doing the next reading pretty soon for some theater companies and some broadway folk. And it should be cool.

You’re doing a documentary about the legacy of A Tribe Called Quest. What is the legacy of A Tribe Called Quest? I guess A Tribe Called Quest legacy was just come as you are, be who you are. And it was a celebration of individuality and expressing who you are no matter what color, creed, background, any of that, because we came up in a time where it was like Public Enemy, NWA, Run-D.M.C. And they were saying fuck the police, or it takes a nation of millions to hold us back, or themes like that. When we came out we just said Bonita Applebum, or I left my wallet in El Segundo. These idiosyncratic titles, and just a different type of music. It was easier for white America to get an introductory to the form through us because we weren’t as in you face as the NWA or Public Enemy. But yet socially, we still made the same comments about the same things that they did, but we attacked it from a more cerebral place. We came through more of a conversationalist side, where as Public Enemy was more of a bull horn, like whoa! you know what I mean? And I think we may have gotten further. So I think the strains of our legacy are still around. Whether it was the Fugees, or Outkast, or Common, or Kanye. They all embodied the things we had going on.

Every Friday night you are DJing at the Ace, which is very trendy, it’s a hot spot. You know I still DJ. Twenty years later, I DJed last week at a bowling alley. I’m a bowling alley DJ. No matter what I do, where I’ve been, I want to go back once in a while and DJ. Exactly, it’s like a release.

It’s a release. You were an act, and now you’re a DJ. Now the lines are muddled, acts are DJs. When we started out, actually right down the block, I used to DJ at this place called Mars.

It was Rudolf’s joint. Yes it was right down the block. Yeah. And what was the Japanese guy's name?

Yuki Watanabe. I used to DJ at this spot, and I guess it was a knock off of Danceteria in concept because of the different floors. And we were 18, it was like the first place we played in the city. Dave Funken Klein used to promote it.

It was the Meatpacking before the Meatpacking. Yeah, oh yeah.

You’re DJing every Friday, it’s a release, you love it. But you were doing it for a long time with Mark. Was that Fridays or was it Thursdays? Fridays at Life.

So this goes back, Life was ’96, ’97, ’98. Then we got our own, exclusive thing, so we moved around.

Why do you like Friday night? Of all the nights, why is it Friday? I mean, I like Thursdays too. But I like Fridays because I think all of the other nights you can get a specific crowd that will probably come all the time, and will come between a certain time, and it’s cool, but I always try to convert people. And I feel like there’s probably more people out on a Friday. There’s more borough people who come into the city a little bit more. So I try to catch them.

(AU) Do your sets vary greatly from week to week? Depending on the crowd? Yeah, it does. You should come check it out. I play everything. From rock, to pop, reggae, to dub, to hip hop. I normally don’t play that much new stuff. Once in a while I’m play something new, but I like like to play the stuff that influences a lot of the new stuff.

What were the clubs that influenced you? Who were the other DJs who have been important to you? Clubs, man. I remember trying to get into Nell’s and Jessica (Rosenblum) turning me away. I think I must’ve been about 18. She knew I was probably too young. Then the hip hop clubs like Latin Quarter and Union Square, which is where Petco is in Union Square .

Yeah that was my club. Yeah. What was it called?

The Underground for like 10 years and then it became The Palace.de Beaute. Yeah. Wow, that was a joint. We were crazy back then. After that, I remember Cuando, that was a great club.Cuando? On Houston and A maybe? It was a school, and it had the rooftop with the cage over it? And then I remember Hotel Amazon, downtown. I remember it at like an old school. That was right on, not Grand, but Rivington? That school that’s on Rivington? I remember where Patrick Moxy used to move his party Payday at Grand Street Ball. That was down by the east side. Then there was the Ukraine Hall that used to be there sometimes.

These are all underground parties that lasted maybe 6 months. Yeah. But I used to go to the FunHouse. too

Jellybean’s—DJ John “Jellybean” Benitez—joint. Yeah. 1018, or Roxy. With Vito Bruno

And Dj Roman Ricardo. Yeah, Roman Ricardo. I used to love him as a DJ. Louie Vega— he was badass.

He’s still a badass. Yeah, he was great. Who else did I used to really dig? You know who I used to love? He moved to Hawaii, Jules. I used to love Jules. Because Jules spun at Nell’s for a minute, and didn’t he used to spin at Danceteria?

Yeah. Jules would go from rock, to disco, to whatever. He played the genres, but he would dress and become the person. He would chameleon. If he was into hip hop, he would become hip hop. If he was into rock and roll, he was a rocker. He dressed the part. He was a very good DJ.

Tell me about working with Hennesey. One of the things that stands out to me about it is the arts education aspect of it. This corporation understands their weight in the community. Because Hennessy, specifically is a drink that a middle class person will be like, it’s my guy’s birthday, I’m going to give him a really nice bottle of cognac. It’s considered to be a thing that can be affordable or a stretch to the pockets. So when you give it to somebody, you drink it with somebody, it’s a momentous occasion. I think they understand that blue collar attraction to their brand. So usually when you break that whole section down, and what that demographic’s function is, family, kids, their schooling and education, they do diligence. And they say, well this is our consumer. And they probably will be our consumer for another 15 years. Their kids’ kids, and all of that. Well let’s try to do something and take care of the art part of it, or the education. So they’re thoughtful in that sense. I’m impressed by that, because they didn’t have to do that, and because they’re a big time corporation. So for them to be able to be insightful is cool.

(AU) As curator, do you take a different approach when organizing a group of artists for the Hennessy Artistry than you would for any other group concert? Is there a tone you intend to give to the concert? I guess being that I’m doing it with the Roots, were going to decide what those factors are in choosing somebody. But it’s got to feel like they’re encompassing different genres. It has to be a great mix of things. Because in a literal sense, you’re going to see how Hennessy can mix and blend when you’re at the venues, what kind of drinks you can have with the Hennessy liquor. So we want to try to echo that with the artists that we choose for the performances.