Along with his brother Jeffrey (JQ), GQ’s devoted the last 15 years to a series of ad-rap-tations of the Bard of Avon’s poetic masterpieces. The pair’s breakthrough came in the late ‘90s, when they spun The Comedy of Errors into The Bomb-itty of Errors. A few years down the line, they restyled Much Ado About Nothing into Funk It Up About Nothin’, which boosted their international fortunes. Now the Q Brothers are back with their most ambitious work yet, Othello: The Remix, which lands in Melbourne this week.
As far as GQ’s concerned, what they’re doing isn’t that ridiculous when you think about it. “It’s our belief – and this is a strong belief – that if Shakespeare were alive today there’s no other thing he would be but a rapper,” he says. “He’s a master storyteller who uses poetry and musical language to tell his stories. And what are the best rappers in the world? They’re master storytellers who use poetry and musical language to tell their stories.
“The way that Shakespeare spoke to the culture and to the people, the way he had noble aristocrats up in arms over his subject matter, the way he had people coming to see his shows and cheering and getting rowdy and the way that he referenced things, the embedded cultural references of the time – I challenge anyone to tell me one other thing that Shakespeare would be if it was not a rapper.”
New York MC par excellence Nas expressed a similar sentiment last year during a TV interview. When comedian and talk show host Bill Maher deemed poetry the province of girly men, Nas replied, “I don’t know any soft poets.” Maher then singled out Shakespeare, to which Nas countered, “His game was airtight. How do you tell a bitch ‘To be or not to be?’ That’s cold.” GQ clearly sees an artistic affinity between Shakespeare and hip hop, but his estimation of Shakespeare wasn’t always so glowing.
“I actually hated Shakespeare with a passion growing up,” he says. “I grew up with a reading disability and Shakespeare didn’t offer anything in the way of comfort in that respect.
“I think I was 20, 21 years old when I first really understood what Shakespeare was,” he explains. “When I was at NYU I was in a Shakespeare play. This was the Experimental Theatre Wing, so we would spend two or three hours on two lines of our dialogue, so you find so much you can mine out of the language. I remember when it clicked and I heard it finally as music.”
While GQ has drawn this connection – and can line up a team of reasons why rapping Shakespeare isn’t culturally obscene – getting hardcore Shakespearians to acknowledge the merits of the Q Brothers’ radicalisations is another matter entirely. Though, once they’re in the theatre, turning the favour of such prudes becomes a lot easier, says GQ.
“Phillip Hinton, he was part of the Royal Shakespeare Company for many years, and he saw us in Australia. He’s one of many purists we’ve had come up to us afterwards and say ‘I came here really expecting to, wanting to and ready to hate on what you’re doing and to tell you that you’re bastardising Shakespeare. And all I can tell you is that I have not seen a Shakespeare production that felt more like what I picture the real thing to be 500 years ago than this piece.’ I’m not trying to big ourselves up, but whenever I’m asked the question of purists I think of him.
“It must be noted that the Q Brothers aren’t simply reliving Shakespeare’s classic texts over a sampled drum beat. For Othello: The Remix they’ve transformed the play’s titular protagonist from a Moorish general in the Venetian army to an American rap mogul. The core of Shakespeare’s tragic narrative stays in tact, though.
“You ultimately maintain about 15 per cent of Shakespeare’s original language,” says GQ. “What we keep so high in our minds is that we have to tell the true story that Shakespeare was telling and stay true to the essence of the story, and the plot. So you’ll probably be surprised when you see our show that, even though we’ve made Othello a rapper, the plot entirely adheres to Shakespeare’s plot. It’s a fine line of staying true to the story and then feeling empowered to take liberties and not treat the text so holy that you end shooting yourself in the foot.”
Othello sure is an ugly tragedy, full of betrayal, manipulated revenge and lined throughout with racial hostility and sexism. In essence, it a decidely grim tale, but GQ promises Othello: The Remix isn’t quite so suffocating.
“It is so full of laughs,” he says. “We keep the heartfelt, tragic moments heartfelt and tragic, but surrounding those moments we cover it with so much laughter that you get sucker punched by the actual tragedy.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
