S. Samuel
As hip-hop veteran Q-Tip's upcoming Industry Rules book begins to take form, SOHH sat down with contributor dream hampton to discuss her experience working on the project.
According to dream, Q-Tip’s untold stories will likely change people’s views of him.
“I’m writing [Industry Rules] now, it should be done [soon],” dream told SOHH. “Q-Tip is an incredible storyteller. I think that people will be surprised about that. I really want to video tape him telling some of these stories as kind of a companion piece [to the book]. He’s a really, really good storyteller and he’s incredibly animated. I have footage back when I was shooting my documentary class at NYU and I was going around shooting different stuff. He’d be everywhere. I’m in a session with Mobb Deep when they were working on The Infamous, just shooting them working and there’s Tip. He’s just friggin’ everywhere. [laughs] He pops up on Jay-Z‘s ‘Girls, Girls, Girls,’ he’s a dude from Queens so there’s a lot that goes with that that people don’t know about, like the whole Southside, hood sh*t. His stories are incredibly interesting and he spans so many different eras of hip-hop and he’s probably one of the better storytellers I’ve spoke with.” (SOHH)
Earlier this month, Tip gave some hints at what fans could expect from Industry Rules.
The A Tribe Called Quest frontman talked about Industry Rules, the guidebook he’s working on with writer dream hampton, who also worked with Jay-Z on Decoded. Due out in 2011, Q-Tip said Industry Rules is not a memoir, but a “cautionary tales of the industry. My little stories and each one will have a rule to it. I don’t want to give to much up but it’s gonna be like ‘There’s rules to this sh*t I wrote me a manual,'” he said referring to The Notorious B.I.G.‘s classic song “The Ten Crack Commandments.” (XXL Mag)
Information on the book’s progress hit the Internet last year.
Q-Tip has signed on the dotted line with Ballantine Books for an unexpected memoir. Titled Industry Rules, Q-Tip is expected to carefully construct his life story that includes growing up in Queens, his rise and fall with A Tribe Called Quest and subsequent solo success thereafter. The book, also in cooperation Random House Publishing Group, which owns Ballatine Books, was sold recently and according to a release is “a creatively constructed telling of his life story”. (Examiner)
Recently, dream hampton talked to SOHH about the trend of rappers releasing books.
“Even as a writer, I don’t privilege the written word over the [spoken] word. I don’t think that a culture is less valid because it’s primarily oral and I don’t think that all of these hip-hop books validate or make hip-hop more real or more important. Hip-Hop would be just as important as it is without anybody writing a book.” (SOHH)
Check out Q-Tip speaking on Industry Rules below:
Q-Tip Talks New Book from XXL Video on Vimeo.
