“Yo, I’m Beatrice a.k.a MC Lady B. I’m the woman every woman ever wants to be. It’s MC Benedict that I scorn, that’s ‘cause he’s ‘been a dick’ since he was born,” rapped GQ of the Q Brothers, who performed at Conn this past Wednesday. The Q Brothers consist of Gregory J. Qaiyum (GQ), his brother Jeffrey Allen Qaiyum (JAQ), Jackson Doran and Postell Pringle. They are a theater group based out of Chicago and perform “hip-hoptations” of Shakespeare’s plays, meaning they write rap songs based on the plays of William Shakespeare.
Before the Q Brothers existed, GQ performed on his own. He was a senior at the Experimental Theatre Wing of NYU when he first thought of rapping Shakespeare. “I wanted to do an independent project when I graduated in ’98 that [would] incorporate hiphop and theater,” said GQ.
Going off of this idea, GQ and his group of friends, who were also emcees, wrote and performed The Bomb-itty of Errors, which was produced off-Broadway. Soon after, GQ starred alongside Nick Cannon in Drumline (he was the white guy). GQ was also in Taxi starring Queen Latifah and Jimmy Fallon and Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale. He has put his illustrious film career on hold, at least for now, in order to return to his passion for hip-hop Shakespeare. In 2008, GQ returned to The Q Brothers in Chicago where they wrote and performed Funk It Up About Nothin’, which is based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. It was highly acclaimed during its time in Chicago as well as during its stint in Australia.
Thanks to the Sherman Fairchild Grant for the Sustainability of the Arts, Professor Nancy Hoffman of the Theater Department was able to have The Q Brothers perform at Conn. Hoffman said, “They’re taking something old and making it new again for us now, and that says something about sustainability.”
Cro’s Nest was stuffed to the brim with students, teachers, and even some parents. The Q Brothers began the show by performing a snippet from Funk It Up About Nothin’ to introduce the premise of hip-hop Shakespeare. There is no denying that the idea of hip-hop Shakespeare is unorthodox, but for some reason rap and Shakespeare just kind of work together. The lyrics to their songs show that The Q Brothers have a clear understanding of the literature. Their songs follow the exact stories of Shakespeare’s plays: “I got an idea, tonight the boys are wearing masks. Let’s head to their party and mess wit their ass.”
This, however, was when the show started to nose-dive. While GQ was rapping, he missed one of his lyrics and had to rewind the song so he could try it again. He tried to laugh it off by saying he “funked up,” but the audience just awkwardly laughed. Then, he tried the line for a second time, but still could not get it. Finally, JQ had to feed him the line. Next up was JQ, who although he remembered all of his lines, got a little too excited to be rapping and started jumping around on stage like a headless chicken.
After their three minute performance, they taught the audience how to rap by doing a repeat-after-me game with their Shakespeare rap lyrics. But once again GQ could not remember the lyrics, despite the fact that he had them on the page in front of him. The audience thought it was funny and seemed to enjoy rapping nonetheless. During the next part of the show, the audience was free to ask the group questions; this turned into a half hour lecture by The Q Brothers. Several people went to this event thinking that it would be an hour long performance show when in reality The Q Brothers only performed for a half hour and lectured for forty-five minutes. “It was interesting, but not the performance show I was expecting,” said one audience member.
Little did the audience know that the lecture was not the worst part of the show; that title was saved for their freestyling. When people refer to themselves as emcees you assume that they are at least decent at rapping. This was not the case, however, with The Q Brothers. An audience member even went as far as to say, “They’re one step above anti-drug rapping groups.” First, they asked the audience for three random words on which to base their improvised song. The words were: doctor, blue walls and grapefruit. Postell went first, “Yeah. You’ll never find another doctor like me, because I give you grapefruit to make ya healthy. It’s got vitamin-C, it’s got antioxidants, yo! I ain’t saying s*** to you, I’m just saying put it in you. And later on you’ll be feeling so good. Even when you take a doo-doo it’ll be coming out so eloquently. Yo, I’m speaking to you so evidently.” This went on for a while, but I’ll spare you. For four guys who said they rapped on the streets of New York, their freestyling skills were subpar. Good freestyling comes from steady rhythm and clever lyrics that rhyme, not the ridiculous ramblings of an emcee who cannot even keep a beat.
Despite their abysmal freestyling, The Q Brothers are a talented group who are good at what they do. When they performed their material from Funk It Up About Nothin’, it was pretty good. Given the choice between seeing a four hour performance of King Lear or seeing Funk It Up About Nothin’, which runs for an hour and ten minutes, I’d choose the latter. The only reason their hip-hop Shakespeare works is because they know it’s a joke, so they make their show a comedy and write funny lyrics. As long as they continue to do that and never freestyle again, The Q Brothers will be successful.
