Vince Staples Is Rap’s Newest TV Auteur

Mankaprr Conteh
·20 min read
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Credit: Erik Carter*
Credit: Erik Carter*

In one of the best episodes of The Vince Staples Show – a dark Netflix comedy following the fictionalized life of the titular rapper – Vince slowly but surely leverages a bank robbery he’s caught in the crosshairs of to his advantage. Perhaps this quiet doggedness is autobiographical; in reality, Vince Staples has been actively trying to produce his own television show for about eight years, finally getting it over the line with its Feb. 15 premiere.

“I feel like a lot of the time we want to do things but kind of don’t necessarily understand the work that goes into doing those things,” Staples tells Rolling Stone on Zoom from his home near Los Angeles. “I’ve never been that person.”

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When he started landing meetings for his show idea with people who could help make it happen, he got the sense no one thought he was ready. He then leveraged his quite successful rap career as a testing ground for filmmaking. Staples’ debut album, 2015’s Summertime ‘06, garnered him mainstream acclaim after having made mixtape cuts with members of Odd Future, ScHoolboy Q, and Mac Miller. With his next EP, 2016’s Prima Donna, he starred in a surrealist short film, a compelling peak into his stark and cartoonish style.

That mark would permeate his next albums, Big Fish Theory and FM!, whereas his most recent, Vince Staples and Ramona Park Broke My Heart, leaned into his penchant for the type of searing, communal storytelling about navigating his gang-riddled hometown that also laces his new show. Along the way, Staples made cinematic music videos and even a beta version of The Vince Staples Show on YouTube. Kenya Barris, the creator of ABC’s hit series Black-ish, joins Staples as an executive producer of the Netflix iteration, calling him “a hood savant.”

Famously, Staples never planned to be a rapper, instead falling into it with friends on the scene and with an obvious wit and poetry to him. As a kid, he didn’t have a CD player or an iPod, he tells Rolling Stone. He mostly watched a lot of old TV alongside the elder family members he grew up with. He’d been inadvertently studying seasons of The Twilight Zone, The Andy Griffith Show, and M*A*S*H since childhood.

Staples later honed in on acting by trial and error — taking auditions, losing many parts and landing a few seminal ones in shows like Abbott Elementary and films like a remake of White Men Can’t Jump starring Jack Harlow — and getting by with a little help from some very famous friends. “Based on upbringing, background, stuff like that, I didn’t even know there was school and training for stuff like that,” he says of acting. “I didn’t spend much time in high school, honestly. I don’t think I got to that point to where you got those classes. I’ve just been able to be surrounded, based on my profession, by people who have knowledge and ask them questions. I’ve been really, really lucky to have that situation.” Here, Vince Staples talks about his peer-mentors like Donald Glover, connects the dots between TV shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Eve, and Atlanta, and answers some rapid-fire questions about surviving sticky situations.

Who are some of the people that you think you’ve gotten some of the best acting advice from?
Oh, man. Miles Bullock, Tyler James Williams, Quinta [Brunson], obviously, Melvin Gregg, Karen Obilom, Naté Jones, Donald Glover himself. Cord Jefferson, who just put out this film, American Fiction. It’s just really, really great — a good friend of mine. Dave Chappelle … just so many people who just lent help over time.

[There was] a conversation from when I was younger, not even really trying to garner that information, but just from Don Cheadle coming to the studio when I was younger — it wasn’t because of me, but certain people being in certain rooms. He knew No I.D. and my management and all those older guys, but I ask people questions, so I’ve been surrounded by so many people who have just kind of helped. Rick [Famuyiwa], who’s the director of Dope, and he directed the pilot of The Wood that we ended up doing was always helping and giving the information. I’ve just been surrounded by great people.

It’s interesting that Donald Glover was a source of knowledge for you. I’m curious — I love this pattern that we’ve seen emerge of shows about rappers being rappers, even if that’s just the surface premise. Why do you think that has become so common lately?
I just feel like artists within a creative medium has kind of been a [TV] thing reoccurring, and even if it’s kind of [loose]. I think just with the growth of rap music, it’s becoming a hand-in-hand type thing just because the medium’s getting bigger. When I was younger, Jamie Foxx [was] a musician and an actor and [had] The Jamie Foxx Show where he worked in a hotel, but he still had the essence of that. I think of that being something similar to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, even though [Will Smith] was not rapping on the show. It was [still] very much so rooted in their love and appreciation for hip-hop music. And as the medium grows, people’s willingness to pay attention to it [and] their understanding of it allows us to push these ideas further.

I remember being a kid and seeing Eve‘s television show. I think as music gets bigger now, you don’t need that other thing. Eve doesn’t have to be “Shelly.” She can now be Eve because we know that the profession is big enough. We don’t have to switch certain things up to make the story make sense. Jamie Foxx might not have needed to be working at the hotel. He could have just probably been a musician.

One of the things that I think is interesting about your show is it’s really about your day-to-day life. The career as a rapper is so much in the background. It’s almost like a phantom character. Why did you approach it that way?
Just because that’s how life is. For me, I think most of the time we’re not doing the thing, and I think we have this weird perception of reality just based on the way the world is. Obviously, capitalism, but also social media, social class, a lot of things play a part in it to where you have to be the thing all the time. I’ve never really been that person. I remember when I was younger, I had an article that said “Vince Staples, the anti-rapper.” And it’s like, I don’t even know what that means, but I think we have a perception of what we want people to do or be. I’m not the biggest artist, and I’m fine with that. I think we kind of have more peace in the show to allude to that. There’s always going to be a point in time where you’re not the thing. So I don’t really believe in leaning into the thing like that. It was just natural.

I was talking to one of my colleagues, Delisa, and we were thinking about how the show is set up around your daily problems and solutions, so we wanted to create “Vince Staples’ Declassified Life Survival Guide” with you, based on that. So, I’m going to give a scenario, and I would love for you to give your best piece of advice or tip for getting through that scenario.
Let’s do it.

OK. Someone really wants to fight you, but you’re not trying to box at all.
Oh, that’s easy. Fake a heart attack, fake a seizure, some sort of medical emergency, or you just start talking about God because everybody loves God. Wait, are these people Black?

Yes. And you’re also Black.
Oh, just start praying. Yeah, just start praying, you good. Come on, my good brother, in the name of Jesus, let’s bow our heads in prayer. And you good.

Damn. OK. Impressing a parent of your significant other.
OK, we talking Mom or we talking Dad?

Let’s do both. Give me Mom and then give me Dad.
Okay. Mom, just tell her she beautiful, and I see where [the daughter] got it from. Boom. That always works. Dad, find a sport. Find a sport or tell them you got a job. These are also Black people, right?

Yeah, we’re going to just do Black people for all of this. We’re all Black.
You got to ask. All right, boom. We love somebody with a job. Oh, man. “How you been, sir? Just working hard down at the job.” Once you hit them with “down at the job,” you good.

What if you don’t have a job?
Oh, you got to pretend you got a job. If you don’t got a job, you don’t even meet nobody daddy. That’s what personal responsibility is. Just be honest with yourself. You got to stay at the house if you don’t got a job.

What about getting pulled over as a Black person?
It depends. Are you breaking any laws at the present moment?

Let’s say a traffic law.
A traffic law. All right, boom. “Yeah, my bad, bro.” That’s it. Just keep it simple. “You know why you got pulled over?” “Yeah, I’m tripping, right? What you got for me?” Take the ticket. Get up out of there. Don’t argue with the man. Take the ticket. You can go about your day, because they waiting for you to trip. I learned that when you get scared of the police, they like, “OK, he got something.” You know what I mean? “Oh, you know you’re going 65?” “Yeah man, it’s a nice car. It’s a Honda.” Take the ticket. Go about your day.

We can add the disclaimer that if a police officer is trying to kill you, there’s probably not much that you can do about that.
Yeah. If he trying to boom you down, like I said, revert to number one. Go straight to prayer. Prayer works, man. Everybody like prayer.

OK. Making money if you don’t have any money.
Get a job, man. We got to stop being so anti-job in this new society with these children, man. Go down to McDonald’s, flip you some fries, man. And live beneath your means. Save money. You don’t got to move out of mama house. You know what I mean? Stay with mama. Save up and don’t buy them purple jeans. You’ll be good.

What are the purple jeans?
You got to stay tapped in with the youth, man. I’m tapped in. I know what the kids like.

Damn. Yeah, I turned 30 in December. I’m very tapped out.
You younger than me. You better know what’s going on, man.

How old are you?
They walking around with the tag on them. I’m 30, ma’am. [Editor’s note: Staples’ birthday is July 2. He is roughly five months older.]

OK, back to the show. Can you tell me more about what you’re pulling from your life and how the “Vince Staples” character is different from you?
Every character is you. I think that’s what gives us nuance. It’s like, OK, [maybe] the name changed, the situation’s changed, but it’s like, say you’re playing a chef, and you’re naturally socially anxious or you’re naturally not the most talkative person. Now, the chef is socially anxious and not the most talkative person. But how would that work as far as you interacting within the kitchen? How do you lead? How do you follow? What do you do when something goes wrong based on who you already are? It’s not you reinventing yourself; it’s more so you reinventing your circumstance then applying the measures to your own character. You see it in a lot of great actors. You see it in Clint Eastwood, you see it in Sidney Poitier, you see it in Denzel Washington. They’re always the same person. It’s just their circumstances are different, and they’re able to kind of interject themselves in the character, which helps you reimagine the character in a way that kind of jumps off the page.

What has your relationship with music been as you’re making this show?
With me, it’s kind of all the same thing. I don’t have a connectivity to music or film or television or anything specifically. It’s kind of just working your way through life’s problems and progress. I have thoughts and ideas, and I’m trying to work my way through [them]. If I work through [them] via music or if I work through [them] via film and television, the important thing is understanding the idea. I’m not really too worried about how people feel when the thing comes out because I already got what I needed from it, which was the processing of that information. You just take the notes as far as what you can do better next time to help people understand where you’re coming from or help people get what they need from whatever you create.

After I did the show, I would go to the studio literally every day. I was filming White Men Can’t Jump and a pilot of The Wood at the same time. I was filming one on Monday, the other on Tuesday and even doing Abbott and going to the writing room on my own show. I also don’t know how to sit down and not work on things.

I think that the music, film, and television industries have had major criticisms leveled at each of them. We just saw a huge joint strike in Hollywood over the summer and music right now, UMG and TikTok are going at it. Artists across mediums are saying they have issues with how streaming works. In terms of the challenges, how do you compare film and TV to music?
The challenges [are] always going to be money — who gives the money and who needs the money? That’s not going anywhere because people — as long as we have capitalism in this kind of structure — people will be greedy and take advantage of other people because it’s just kind of the human thing to do, unfortunately. So I’m just grateful for what I have, especially not having much at all growing up. I can take care of my family, and I can take care of myself and I can create these things. That doesn’t eliminate what’s right and what’s wrong. But I just have a different perspective just based on my starting point. I’m just grateful to be able to … I didn’t graduate from high school. I didn’t have any dreams, hopes, or aspirations growing up. I just lived a different kind of life. So I just take it for what it is and just try to make sure I don’t compromise my character or the character of the people around me for money. And as long as I don’t have to do that, I don’t have any problems. What I get is what I get.

Did you read Issa Rae’s Time interview recently?
No, I haven’t.

Long story short, she made an observation that Hollywood has reneged on a lot of the promises and interests it expressed in non-white stories, Black stories in particular. She also says, as ugly as it can be, it’s going to be really important for her to make a lot of money if she want to change the way that anyone gets opportunities, including herself. I wonder if you have similar observations or just observations around the way that opportunities have flown in Hollywood for Black creators?
I mean, yeah, it’s not fair. I would say right now we’re probably 13 percent of the US population. So the truth of the matter is, we’re not going to be what’s priority. It just doesn’t even make sense for them based on selfishness and greed and all these other things. So I think it’s up to us, as she’s saying, to kind of do whatever we can to create these things and also learn how to create with the lack of money, you know what I mean? How to understand how much things cost, how to work within the community. Because if we all make a film and we all say, We’ll do it for the love of the art and for what it’ll do for these people, then we get into a different terrain of how we can create.

And I think for someone like Issa, it’s important for people who don’t have, I guess, the weight or the impact or just the [name] that she does — it’s important for us to learn how we can create purely and freely and just for the sake of having fun. That way, when it’s time for her to create these things, we’re able to help. We have to be able to help each other with the vision that we all have. If she’s self-funding something, we have the DP that can get it done for whatever, we have the actors that are going to be able to execute for whatever budget she has, and we’re just able to be kind of vessels and tools for each other to use.

I think that’ll really, really help. And I think we try very hard to do so. It’s just a matter of time, like we said, how rap and music has grown over time. I think that we’re also growing over time with our knowledge, our ability, and our accessibility. So as long as we have people who are passionate and willing to help each other, I think we’ll always be able to have an impact, whether anyone else is helping or paying attention or not. I think just emotionally and spiritually, that’s the way people that come after us have something that they could look at and say, this belongs to us. Just pass those things down, like we passed down knowledge or our culture, our ability to read and write. We had to do a lot of things without help and secretly, so I don’t think it’s something that’s out of our abilities.

But that’s tough, right? There’s so much creativity and knowledge among Black creators, but there is such a discrepancy in how much access folks have to the money to create. I guess it sounds like you’re saying build what you can with what you have right now.
Well, yeah, because I think everything matters. I don’t think that they’re ever going to give us a fair shot, but I don’t think that that means we don’t matter. They made such a big deal out of the people making those films off iPhones like Tangerine and whatnot, and that’s amazing. That should show us that we can also do that same thing no matter how small our voice is, no matter what we create, it matters. People get a lot of flack for making Tubi movies that are “low budget,” but I’m happy people feel that they have somewhere they can put their ideas, and people will watch and digest them, and they’re able to express themselves. It’s important for us to just — no matter what they throw our way — continue to create because our stories and our voices matter at every scale.

Your emphasis on unity and support makes me think about an old interview you did, at a time when Nicki Minaj and Remy Ma had rap beef. You were asked what you thought about beef and you said, “That shit is corny as fuck. It’s like, ‘I’m gonna say really hurtful things about you for the sake of hip-hop.’ Oh.” Is that still your attitude towards it?
I feel like getting older, the word I would is unnecessary. I think that’s just from the way that I’ve lived my life as a child and a young adult to where those words had serious implications, and it’s never worth that. And I think that our life and our value to each other and to this world and this planet and history is much more important than whatever kind of spats we have in the moment. Like I said, I come from a different reality where that literally is a daily thing, and it’s not going to go away or stop anytime soon from what I can see, no matter how much I tell people it should.

Hopefully, we learn ways to communicate where we can have more respect for each other. And like I said before, I feel like we’re trying. Nothing’s perfect. Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. But I think we just have to kind of, as people, talk each other off of that ledge instead of being entertained by the nonsense. That would be my hope because I feel like if these things happen, we’re able to collectively say, “Hey, it’s OK, it’s not that deep. It’s not that serious. You guys should talk.”

And in thinking about art and having something to show to other generations, one of the critiques that comes to streamers like Netflix and Max is that sometimes when shows get canceled, folks don’t know how to find them anymore. What do you make of the worry that shows can be scrapped at any second?
I think a physical product is extremely important. And just, even from a sense of historical data, you go into the museums and you have these documents and these works of art and these paintings. All these things are important because it kind of shows that we were here. And I feel like it’s just kind of important to keep physical art alive. And if we can do that and if we kind of demand that and they know that we want that, then it’ll come back. Vinyl had a kick up; they started printing more vinyl. If it can get the money, they’ll make it. So I think, we have to just say that we want those things and we’ll end up with it eventually.

Do you have a way to preserve your first season of The Vince Staples Show physically or just outside of streaming?
Yeah, we might have some stuff here and there, I would say. You never know.

This also reminds me of what is happening with Universal Music Group artists. Many want their music on TikTok, but the label doesn’t. What’s your stance on that move?
Just in general, I feel like — try to obtain as much control of your art as you can. Try to obtain as much of your art as you can, and then you can make those decisions. Don’t kind of get tripped up by a dollar amount. Just try to own it, because then you get to put it wherever you want.

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