Q-Tip has signed on because the music producer and co-lyricist to the artistic crew for the upcoming musical “Ali,” based mostly on the lifetime of the famed heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali.
“Ali” will premiere in fall 2024 on the Kentucky Heart for the Performing Arts in Ali’s hometown of Louisville, with plans to convey the manufacturing to Broadway sooner or later in 2025. The rapper-producer joins the manufacturing alongside a collective comprised of lead producer Richard Willis, composer Teddy Abrams, director and creator Clint Dyer, affiliate music producer Casey Benjamin and music supervisor Sean Mayes.
“Muhammad Ali has been an inspiration for me my whole life,” stated Q-Tip. “I sit up for working with Teddy, Clint, Casey, Sean and your entire artistic crew in telling the nice man’s story on this type.”
In 2017, Abrams, who’s music director of the Louisville Orchestra, initially wrote what’s described as a “multimedia opera-rap-oratorio mashup” entitled “The Best: Muhammad Ali,” which premiered on the Kentucky Heart. That led to Abrams and the artistic crew exploring the concept of a Broadway musical concerning the boxer’s life.
Q-Tip, who received his begin in music as a founding member of A Tribe Called Quest, has been extremely selective of which initiatives he chooses through the years. He final put out an album as a part of Tribe in 2016 with “We Obtained It from Right here… Thank You 4 Your Service,” and promised three solo albums in 2020, together with “The Final Zulu,” which he has been teasing since 2013.
“We’re past delighted and grateful to have the dwelling legend, Q-Tip, be a part of this extraordinary artistic crew on ‘Ali,’” stated Willis. “Q-Tip’s artistry, data and expertise is unmatched. If that wasn’t sufficient, to even have the unimaginable Casey Benjamin and sensible Sean Mayes becoming a member of the crew makes this all really feel a bit surreal but becoming for The Best.”
“I’m thrilled to be working with Q-Tip, who’s certainly one of my music heroes and the proper particular person to affix us in telling Muhammad Ali’s story, in addition to the uber-talented Casey and Sean,” stated Dyer. “Q-Tip is most positively certainly one of hip-hop’s largest artists and an excellent collaborator/producer. Co-writing the lyrics for ‘Ali’ with him might be an honor.”
“We’re extremely lucky to have Q-Tip, Casey, and Sean be a part of the music crew,” added Adams. “They’re all world-class skills with large musical imaginative and prescient and data; they’re already bringing distinctive vitality and inspiration to the musical.”
