At last night’s installment of “Noisemakers” with Peter Rosenberg, the hip-hop equivalent of “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” Q-Tip shared amazing stories about A Tribe Called Quest’s ascension from high school talent shows to international stages.

The event was a rap-nerd’s heaven; a hip-hop history lesson for even the most informed old-school heads in attendance. Thankfully the evening didn’t devolve into a The Low End Theory vs. Midnight Marauders death match, and instead consisted of hilarious impersonations, amazing stories and background on some of the greatest hip-hop records ever recorded.

Here are some of the gems from last night:

1. Tip revealved that he made the beat for “Bonita Applebum” at the age of 15.

2. After the dissolution of Leaders of the New School, Busta Rhymes was on the verge of joining ATCQ! He ended up going solo, but not without Tip’s help. He explains below.

In the above clip he also imitates Busta’s animated performance of “Scenario” on the Arsenio Hall Show (seen below).

3. Tip put on the late J-Dilla. Many already know this, but last night Q shared how he was introduced to Dilla and how he then proceeded to turn all of hip-hop onto the Detroit beat-making legend. Peep the video below.

4. In addition to Dilla and Busta, Q-Tip helped launch the careers of Mobb Deep’s Prodigy and Havoc.

5. The Low End Theory was sonically inspired by NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, which in turn inspired Dr. Dre’s The Chronic.

6.”I Left My Wallet in El Segundo” was on the first demo tape A Tribe Called Quest ever recorded. That demo prompted a bidding war between Def Jam, Geffen and Jive.

7. Tip kicked it with De La Soul and The Jungle Brothers back when he was still in high school and those groups were just breaking. As Peter Rosenberg said, “These are rap super heroes. You’re talking about hanging out with MC Serch and DJ Red Alert! And that was nothing for you. That was just Saturday!”

For a generation of Tribe stans, last night’s “Noisemakers” was a revealing look at one of the best emcee/producers of all time. Tip offered an exclusive inside look at a group that changed hip-hop with their dominant bass lines, catchy jazz samples and live instrumentation. Whether or not you are/were a fan of ATCQ, they pioneered a brand of hip-hop carried into the present by The Roots, Common, Mos Def and others.

Tip famously spit on “Electric Relaxation,” “I couldn’t drop dimes cuz she couldn’t relate,” but luckily last night we could and he did. Even hip-hop’s nerd-in-chief, ?uestlove, left amazed.

-Lukas Brekke-Miesner

Classic rock records got the LEGO treatment a few months back, so it was only a matter of time before hip-hop’s finest got their due. Check a few choice selections in the gallery below, and head over to Format for even more awesomeness. (Thanks to Prefix for the tip.)

In 2004, the fresh-outta-high school Liberty brothers—Mike and Patrick—launched Akomplice, a small streetwear brand based in their small hometown of snowy Carbondale, Colorado. Fast forward four years and the duo have taken their label global. GIANT caught up with Patrick Liberty as he offered some advice to aspiring designers on how to get their clothing line poppin’.

1. Find Inspiration

“I didn’t wanna start my own brand. My brother said to me, ‘I wanna make some fresh clothing that actually means something and that’s ill because there’s nothing out there.’ This was a long time ago when we’d just wear blank t-shirts because we were sick and tired of almost every brand out just putting a logo across the chest. We really weren’t feeling it.”

2. Come Original

“When I grew up, I did a lot of crazy stuff. I used to rock this belt that was super long—it was my grandpa’s belt and after he died, I grabbed it. This belt hung down to my shins even though I was a real tall kid. Then, all of a sudden, at school everyone started rocking these belts where you let the end hang down towards your knees.

I actually disliked hip-hop because of the negativity towards women and drugs and violence. Then, I just got super into A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang so that’s where the hip-hop influence comes from. The same way the Bronx started hip-hop and then other parts of the world just kind of took it—West Coast style, East Coast style—I got Colorado style.”

3. Start Designing Dope Shit

“Sometimes, you’re just looking through stuff and all of a sudden you see something and you go, ‘That’s so dope, that would be ill on a t-shirt.’ This one tee in particular (pictured above) came from Aaron Phillips, one of the guys we work with, and he’s a basketball fanatic. He just loves how Spike Lee is always at Knicks’ games getting all crazy. That was a Knicks and Bulls game and you can see him going crazy at Scottie Pippen right there. It was a moment in time that was just real fresh looking. We’re also big fans of Spike Lee and his work, and it’s kind of hilarious seeing how short he is compared to Scottie Pippen.”

4. Make Your Name Ring Bells

“My brother had a catalog developed. He showed everyone in our town, and the response was really good.  We sent out 100 catalogs, and we got one store—that was TRUE in San Francisco. We sent catalogs to all of the skate shops because at that point, it wasn’t so much of a boutique world.

We worked in Colorado so I’d go to TRUE and it was one of the coolest stores I’d ever been to. When only they started to pick us up, it motivated me because out of 100 catalogs, the best store we sent to picked us up.

Second season, we sent out one e-mail catalog. The next season was more e-mail and we went to the MAGIC Trade Show.  We went from around 8 stores to 36 stores. The next show, we went from 36 stores to about 65 stores. Now, there are around 200 to 250. Most of our stores are pretty solid with us, but you always have a little flux in the middle. That’s how the game goes. Like your hair, a couple fall out, but most stay in.”

5. Don’t Get Sued

“There are a lot of little technicalities. If you change the picture in a way that it doesn’t fit on top of a photographer’s image—that’s moving arms, legs, heads, turning stuff—then it’s a lot harder for them to get you in trouble. It also depends on the size of the picture. I always reference the time right now as being the time in hip-hop when everyone was sampling everything and before the lockdown when all of a sudden, you had to pay for every little snippet of sound. So there’s a lot of grey area right now.

We did a Heidi Klum t-shirt where she was flipping you off and just shipped them to the stores without telling them and not one store complained. They all actually loved it. We got an e-mail from [Klum’s] foundation basically saying she didn’t want her image out that way as far as flipping people off, because now, she’s kind of like a role model for women, and that image is kinda grimey. This was really early, early in our career.”

… Or Arrested

“Colorado was a swing state, and we really wanted the youth to go out and vote. We decided to do a voting party during the day near early voting locations where people could just walk from the party to the voting place and then come back and party, and every person that votes would get a free t-shirt. It was a bi-partisan event—we didn’t tell anyone who to vote for, but as long as you voted, we celebrated that.

We found one location in Denver—The Red Room—that was three blocks from the polling place and Installation in Boulder—a real dope shoe boutique that was a block and a half away. We rented two limos that continuously took people between the polling places and the parties. Once you came in, there was live music with DJs and drinks, and at the shoe shop, you got 15% off.

People loved it and we hit up all the media outlets in Colorado, newspapers, every news station, and said that they’d come out and cover it. They acted like they were loving it, but then they were like ‘Oh, by the way, did you know that we talked to the Secretary of State? He said that this is illegal, and you guys might be facing charges of bribery.’ They said we planned it in favor of Barack because a lot of people came out in Obama tees. Now, it’s not my fault that no one under 30 is wearing any McCain t-shirts and stuff like that.  Nothing came of it, though.”

Akomplice Season 9 is on the way.

-Devin Chanda

This Q-Tip guy is one hell of an MC. I wonder why no one has ever heard of him before.

All jokes aside, I am really feeling (pause) both this song and the Rik Cordero-directed clip. Hip-Hop might have a savior after all. No offense, ‘Ye.

Q-Tip – “Renaissance Rap” from Three/21 Films on Vimeo.

One of the Ten Commandments of screenwriting is to write what you know and Jonathan Levine clearly took that lesson to heart while penning his hilarious sophomore feature, The Wackness.

The writer/director drew on his own experiences as a mid-’90s Manhattan teenager to craft the seriocomic tale of Luke (Josh Peck), a recent high-school grad who cruises around NYC during the summer of ’94 toting a walkman filled with hip-hop mixtapes and an ice cart packed with dime bags of mary jane.

Despite his access to great marijuana, courtesy of Caribbean connection Percy (Method Man), Luke went through school as an outsider, never invited to join the popular kids or even his fellow stoners. In fact, the only person he can really call a friend is one of his clients, Dr. Squires (Sir Ben Kingsley…yes, you read that right), a middle-aged shrink going through a wicked mid-life crisis. Tired of his job and stale marriage to a much younger woman (Famke Janssen), Squires devotes his energy to improving Luke’s life, primarily by encouraging the frustrated virgin to just get laid already. Of course, the doc reverses that prescription when Luke falls for his stepdaughter Stephanie (Juno’s Olivia Thirlby), a temptress who has a bad habit of breaking guys’ hearts.

Throughout the film, Levine strives to connect Luke’s coming-of-age story to the growing pains New York experienced in 1994, when Giuliani came into power and changed the face of the city. But let’s be real for a sec: the ‘94 setting is mainly a gimmick to distract the audience from the film’s overly familiar narrative. Fortunately, this gimmick pays off like gangbusters. Packing the soundtrack with classic hip-hop tracks, including Tribe’s “Can I Kick It?”, Nas’ “The World is Yours” and Biggie’s “The What,” Levine gets the audience grooving on his flick’s funky vibe from the first frame.

The cast is crucial to the movie’s success as well; Nickelodeon veteran Peck completely reinvents his teen idol image, while Kingsley is a laugh riot as a former straight-arrow spiraling out of control. Best of all is Thirlby, whose sleepy-eyed sexiness puts her in the realm of such vintage high school dream girls as Phoebe Cates and Jennifer Connelly. Although the film falls flat in some of its more dramatic moments, overall The Wackness provides a pleasant mid-summer buzz.

His group got no respect. His skills were ignored. His style was laughed at. Now the Black Eyed Peas have sold 20 million records, Fergie is a global superstar, and designers love his look. Meet will.i.am, pop music’s new million-dollar genius.

A 20-year-old black man with dreadlocks stands in line at a crowded welfare office in East Los Angeles accompanied by his mother and his girlfriend, a petite Filipina. The wait is excruciatingly long.

“Ma, I don’t think I should get on welfare,” the man says.

“Why? It’s almost your turn!” his mother replies in bewilderment.

“Nah, this ain’t right. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be. Let’s go home.”

“What are we gonna do, Will?” says his girlfriend.

“Don’t worry about it, baby,” the man says calmly. “It’s gonna be all right.”

With the women in tears, the three leave the building.

This is the story of William Adams, otherwise known as superstar producer and Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am.

Like a musical Bat Cave, will.i.am’s home studio is a cavernous space located on the bottom floor of his three-story, six-bedroom villa in Hollywood’s Los Feliz neighborhood. A futuristic control board dominates the room, which is decorated with plush leather chairs, marble floors and retro, bordello-style crimson wallpaper. Several monitors hang from the studio’s walls, allowing guests to view the work Will performs on his computer screen in real time.

“These niggas don’t understand,” Will, 33, says of those who dubbed him a sellout after the runaway success of the Peas’ 2003 album, Elephunk. “Other rappers can sock the block, but I’m socking the planet!”

Will’s not just talkin’ trash. In 1995 Will formed the Black Eyed Peas with friends Jamie “Taboo” Gomez, Allan “apl.de.ap” Pineda and Dante Santiago (who eventually left the group but remains Will’s right-hand man). Like the West Coast’s answer to A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, the Peas positioned themselves as socially conscious hip-hoppers with influences ranging from jazz to alternative rock. They marketed themselves to college kids, targeting university radio stations and clubs like Dragonfly and the Roxy. The strategy paid off, and in 1997 they found themselves at the center of a label bidding war (with Interscope Records eventually writing the check) and have since become a global force by masterminding their fun-loving, fusion-heavy sound and eclectic image.

The group’s first album featuring new member Stacy “Fergie” Ferguson, Elephunk produced the Peas’ first hit, “Where Is The Love?” The crew’s next album, 2005’s Monkey Business, featured such hits as “Don’t Phunk With My Heart,” “Pump It” and “My Humps,” which became the first single to sell more than 2 million ringtones. Together, both albums have sold more than 19 million copies worldwide. The Black Eyed Peas have won three Grammy Awards—Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in 2004 and 2005 (for “Let’s Get It Started” and “Don’t Phunk With My Heart,” respectively) and Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group for “My Humps” in 2006. They’ve also toured the world, performing before ecstatic crowds in Japan, Germany, Italy, Russia, Romania, Israel, South Africa, Nigeria, Sweden, Brazil, Australia, South Korea and the United Kingdom.

Aside from BEP material, Will has produced and been featured on tracks for the Game (“Compton”), Carlos Santana (“I Am Somebody”), Sergio Mendes (“Mas Que Nada,” “The Heat”), Busta Rhymes (“I Love My Bitch”), Nas (“Hip-Hop Is Dead,” “Can’t Forget About You”), Mary J. Blige (“About You”), Justin Timberlake (“Damn Girl”), Common (“I Want You”), John Legend (“Ordinary People,” “Save Room”) and more. In 2006 he was nominated for a Producer of the Year Grammy and lost to the legendary Rick Rubin.