Michael Rapaport

By KATHRYN BRANCH | July 8, 2011, 12:29 pm

In 1998, when the hip-hop luminaries A Tribe Called Quest announced that their show at New York’s famous Tramps nightclub would be their last, fans and fellow musicians everywhere were devastated. There was no curtain call, no bows taken; it just ended. The Manhattan-born actor Michael Rapaport (“Zebrahead,” “Higher Learning”), a son of the general manager to WKTU-FM (Disco 92) and then just a fan in the crowd (he flew in from Mexico for the show), might have been the most crushed, saying now it felt as if his parents were getting divorced. Others in the loyal crowd included the actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the rapper Busta Rhymes, whom many consider the fifth member of the Tribe. Eight years later, at Tribe’s reunion show at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles, Rapaport applauded his favorite group backstage. “Someone needs to make a documentary about you guys,” he told Tribe’s front man, Q-Tip, whom he had met only briefly before. The response? “Go ahead, do it.”

And he did.

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