The Q Brothers are remixing Shakespeare into hip-hop opera

It’s Shakespeare meets Chicago. Originally commissioned by Shakespeare’s Globe London, Othello: The Remix takes the high-stakes tragedy and transports it to the world of hip-hop – with original beats, of course. We talked to the Q Brothers, the brains behind this poetic update, about all things Shakespeare, hip-hop, and musicals.

How did you get started with your hip-hop adaptations? (Or as you call them, ad-RAP-tations)?

GQ: I grew up with a reading disability and hated Shakespeare. I couldn’t understand his plays and I definitely couldn’t relate to them. During my final year at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, I was in the Experimental Theatre Wing and I had teachers show me what Shakespeare could be through exercises that allowed me to hear it as music being sung, played, rapped, spoken. For my final project, I wanted to create a piece merging hip-hop and theatre so I asked some friends who were also actors/rappers to create with me. We had 5 weeks, a black box theatre and $300, so we decided to adapt a text instead of writing totally from scratch. Shakespeare was free and public domain… and his work ended up translating so effortlessly into hip-hop. I was like ‘oh this is music, wow’ for the first time in my life—it still moves my soul to think about it—Shakespeare was music, it was exactly what we were doing , and that unlocked my block to Shakespeare.  

JQ: And when he first started doing that, I was going to school in Massachusetts. I was having so much fun translating the text into rhymes with G that I would skip every other week so I could spend as much time as possible in New York—I was in heaven. And for me, I actually loved Shakespeare growing up, which is weird because I didn’t really like school, but Shakespeare was cool because it was like a puzzle—I had to figure out what each scene meant.

Fox’s new TV show Empire is spun as a hip-hop King Lear (or maybe a hip-hop Lion in Winter), and you’ve been adapting Shakespeare into hip-hop musicals for a little while now. What do you think makes the genre so compatible with the Bard?

Something that we always say is that Shakespeare would be a rapper if he were alive today…we are 100% positive that it would be his form. He was a master storyteller who used musical language and poetry to tell his stories. The rappers that we love are ALSO master storytellers who use poetry and musical language to tell their stories. And the more we dig into it, the more we see the similarities. Rappers today are doing the same multisyllabic rhymes and puns and alliteration and all these things that Shakespeare was doing, and that’s the stuff that gets us excited.

We think Shakespeare would probably be really into the work that we are doing, because he was also borrowing from the artists and storytellers before him. And hip-hop artists are notorious for that! The first lines of Othello: The Remix are:  “Good storytellers borrow, but great ones steal / So believe me, the thievery is how we keep it real.” We’re just continuing his work, but with our own brand of poetry. 

Your Othello Remix takes place within the politics and culture of a rap crew. How did you decide on this setting and world?

We had a hard time relating to the characters’ battle experience, but it instantly reminded us of the rap battles that hip-hop crews compete in. If Othello was the nation’s greatest war hero—that would make him the greatest MC of his generation, the biggest name in hip-hop, in a rap context.

And as we thought more about the music industry, Othello reminded us of this huge shift in hip-hop. It used to be if you were into hip-hop you had to know your history. It’s not counter-cuture anymore—it is the culture. We think this story takes place as the pop culture and the counter-culture were separating. A couple of rappers got really, really big, but then artists fought back because they thought they were “selling out,” and that’s what Iago represents—an underground rapper. Cassio is a more populist rapper he is like the pretty boy that hasn’t been into battle; Roderigo is a nerdy technician on the tour.

Which rappers have influenced your hip-hop sound in your Othello?

We found ourselves writing certain hip-hop archetypes in the characters to enhance the natural dynamics of the crew. Othello is the self-made hip-hop mogul—we would liken him to Jay Z or 50 Cent. Iago is more like Eminem, because he is lyrically intense and has his roots in underground rap. Othello passes on putting out Iago next and decides for the commercial appeal of Cassio, who is largely based on Will Smith.

When did you both start making music – did it come before you started making theatre?

We’ve been into rap ever since we were listening to music, but didn’t really get into theatre into later in life. At the core, they are both ways to share a story with an audience, so we pull from each genre in our work.

Do you enjoy traditional music theatre?

Not usually.

Hip-hop and musical theatre have had a bumpy relationship: Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights was a critical success, and his Hamilton is already one too, but shows like the original Venice and the Tupac jukebox musical Holler If Ya Hear Me have been far less successful. Would you consider moving into the Broadway market, or are they not quite ready yet to catch up to hip-hop and rap on a larger scale?

Of course we would move into a larger market. We would love to reach people on a grander scale. I think there’s some confusion about what hip hop theater is. Often times all hip hop theater gets lumped together. Some of that theater has elements of that culture and style, or some characters that we would classify as hip hop. I can’t speak to the Hamilton piece (which we haven’t seen, but are really excited to), but In The Heights was more of a traditional musical that had a little bit of hip hop in it. The difference is what we do is not a traditional musical. Not because of the genre, but because the scenes between our songs are still over music and in rap. The speed and density of the language during the “scenes” is the meat of our play. And the music never stops. It’s opera.

If you could adapt any other classical author into a hip-hop musical, who would you choose?

We just finished a version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol called A Q Brothers’ Christmas Carol, where each of the ghosts that visit Scrooge emulates a different era in hip-hop. We also have been working with some texts by Goethe, Mark Twain and several other writers. Who knows who we will adapt next!

Othello‘s Iago is one of the greatest villains in our cultural canon. How do you approach writing for someone who seems so evil? How does he fit into the new world you’ve created for your Othello?

It was a blast to write for such a complex and devious character. Our earlier work had focused on the comedies (Much Ado About Nothing and The Comedy of Errors) so it was fun to play with darker material in this piece. The trick was balancing being true to the story, and also being true to our more playful and comedic voice. Iago’s more lyric-heavy underground style worked well with his evil nature, because he could be grittier and less refined. Shakespeare had already written such intense language for Iago, so we brought a lot of that into his rhymes, especially in the song “this is why I hate the Moor.”

Desdemona is a fascinating character – she’s both wilful and good, and those two aspects of her personality can be hard to balance. What kind of person is the Desdemona in your production?

Desdemona is this perfect, pure, beautiful woman, who got won over by Othello’s stories, but she didn’t have a lot of depth to her in Shakespeare’s play. One of our biggest challenges in adapting Othello was that we wanted to update the female perspective and characters so that they didn’t seem so weak—as they were often originally written—in a modern world. We wanted to make those characters stronger, in order to match the strength and wit of the modern woman.

So while even thought Emilia and Bianca are played by Jackson and JQ as part of the multi-role aesthetic of the show, we didn’t think it would do the work justice to play Desdemona in this way. We found that she worked more strongly as a device than as a character—so the audience only ever meets her as a musical voice, never in person.  This choice adds a lot of tension to the ending between Desdemona and Othello. Like in a horror movie, what you don’t see can be much more powerful—your imagination takes over.  

Both Shakespeare and hip-hop contributed to and subverted the English language and daily vernacular. What’s your favourite verse / monologue / couplet that you’ve taken from Shakespeare and adapted – and what did it become in your adaptation?

I wouldn’t call this my favorite by any means, but it’s an example of our translation.

Shakespeare’s Original:

BIANCA:
And I was going to your lodging, Cassio.
What, keep a week away? seven days and nights?
Eight score eight hours? and lovers’ absent hours,
More tedious than the dial eight score times?
O weary reckoning!

Q Brothers version:

BIANCA:
It’s been so long Cassio, like a week
Not that I’m obsessed like one of those groupie freaks
But that’s seven days! 168 hours!
10 thousand and 80 minutes, has our love soured?
Tell me how so I can learn the lesson
Of these 604 thousand 800 seconds!

Here’s another that’s less of a direct translation but is more interesting lyrically

Shakespeare’s Original:

Iago:
Work on,
My medicine, work! Thus credulous fools are caught;

Q Brothers version:

Iago:
Othello’s bitin’ the bait– hook, line, and sinker
I’m like Rodan, the monster and “the thinker”
The pieces of my puzzle I’ma press into place
And I can tell it’s workin’, see the stress on his face?

Othello: The Remix
18 – 22 February

Book now at
artscentremelbourne.com.au

This is a sponsored article by Arts Centre Melbourne.