"That Time Migos Met Mike Tyson" by GQ

Started by Jordan, Apr 19, 2017, in Music Add to Reading List

  1. Jordan
    Posts: 10,838
    Likes: 34,266
    Joined: Nov 25, 2014

    Jordan ⛴⛵️✈️

    Apr 19, 2017
    [​IMG]

    That Time Migos Met Mike Tyson

    What does success look like for Atlanta three-piece Migos? A number one single, a critically beloved album, and, apparently, a tour of Mike Tyson’s pigeon coop.

    [​IMG]
    Hoodie, $90, by Fila / Pants, $1,270, by Stella McCartney / Vintage glasses by Ettore Bugatti / Own custom watch by Patek Philippe

    In the glittering twilight south of Las Vegas, the clouds look like dark mountains, and the mountains look like clouds. Migos—three guys from Atlanta jammed shoulder to shoulder in the back seat of a Sprinter, like kid brothers—are on their way to Mike Tyson's house. In January, their second album, Culture, came out and went to No. 1. They've had a song, “Bad and Boujee,” at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 ever since Donald Glover, who cast them on Atlantalast year as woods-dwelling, most-dangerous-game-playing d--- dealers, paid homage to them at the Golden Globes: “I really wanna thank the Migos—not for being in the show, but for making ‘Bad and Boujee.’ Like, that's the best song ever.” Now they are in that strange dreamlike state of success where every morning the three of them wake up and something like “Tour Mike Tyson's pigeon coop” is on the schedule.

    Quavo, 26, keeps a carefully updated calendar on his phone that is full of this stuff: Private-jet flights, photo shoots, tour dates, appearances on late-night talk shows. Pigeon coops. He fishes his phone out of his Louis Vuitton purse, heavy with rubber-banded stacks of money, just to show me the calendar. “People want to know where I'm going, and I just don't ever know,” he says. “I got tired of that”—wondering what city he was in. “It got too rapid.” Offset, 25, and Takeoff, 22, nod in agreement. Like Quavo, Takeoff is wearing John Lennon sunglasses. His purse is by Fendi and is currently supporting the weight of a wholesale-size box of Gushers, from which he methodically eats bag after bag in a way that makes my teeth hurt just watching him.

    [​IMG]
    Track jacket $90 pants $60 Kappa / T-shirt, $150, by Coach 1941/ Sunglasses by Raen / Leather bracelet (bottom) by Salvatore Ferragamo / Other bracelets (his own) Cartier
    [​IMG]
    Quavo, born Quavious Keyate Marshall, and Takeoff, born Kirshnik Khari Ball, are uncle and nephew. They have the same delicate skin, interrupted here and there around their eyes by small tattoos. Quavo carries himself with the easy confidence of a former high school quarterback, which he is. Takeoff, whose face is rounder and softer, tends to keep his eyes perpetually half closed, like the Buddha. They open and shut in big, slow cartoon blinks. His vibe is: kind astronaut. Offset, in the corner, is a cousin who lived in Quavo's mother's house for a time. He was born Kiari Kendrell Cephus. His goatee is righteous. Right now his plaid pants are sagging dangerously low toward his furry Gucci slippers. They are literally being dragged down by all the money in his pockets.

    Quavo's phone rings. “What're you doing tonight?” he asks the woman on the other end. “I'm gonna go to this magic show,” he says. He says they're all going—he's got ten Criss Angel tickets. He asks if she maybe wants to come.

    This is the second day I've spent with Migos, crisscrossing Las Vegas, and I can testify that I've rarely seen anyone as excited as Quavo got when our car window passed the giant moody visage of Criss Angel on a billboard. He was on the phone with their manager, Danny, within seconds.

    “Danny, can you see if Criss Angel got a show tonight?”

    “What?!” Danny said.

    “CAN YOU SEE IF CRISS ANGEL THE MAGIC MAN HAS A SHOW TONIGHT?”

    [​IMG]
    (Quavo) Jacket, $132, t-shirt, $56, by Gosha Rubchinskiy x Sergio Tacchini / Teeth grill by Johnny Dang & Co. / Own custom watch by Patek Philippe / Own custom jewelry (on all) from Avianne & Co. Jewelers / (Takeoff) Track jacket, $90, pants, $60, by Kappa / T-shirt, $150, by Coach 1941 / Sunglasses by Raen / Leather bracelet (bottom) Salvatore Ferragamo / Other bracelets (his own) Cartier / (Offset) Sweatshirt, $182, by Umbro x House of Holland / Pants, $45, by Adidas / Sneakers, $555, by Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh / Socks by Adidas Originals / Glasses by Moscot / Own custom watch Audemars Piguet

    Now Danny has come through. Quavo has already warned everyone, despite the group's nonchalant tendency to do everything three to five hours after it's supposed to be done, that he will tolerate no delays tonight when it comes to seeing Criss Angel. This is a quality I have come to really like about Migos in the short time I've known them: They are genuine enthusiasts. Despite its occasional dark or melancholy edge, their music gives you the sense of people who are prone to getting excited. Because, it turns out, they are prone to getting excited.

    I think a lot about one of Quavo's lines on “Bad and Boujee”: "Yeah, that way!" he says—that way, one of the group's many signature ad-libs—"I used to trap by the Subway." Simple, autobiographical. I always laugh when I hear it. So effective. And yet also just slightly whimsical. That's Migos for you. They go forward by stripping away all the things they don't need. (Also Quavo, earlier in that same song: “When I'm onstage, show me boobies!”) Atlanta is the most innovative city in America, pop-music-wise. And Migos, who are from the city's north side—the first major group to come out of Gwinnett County, which is largely suburban, like a lot of Atlanta—have been among the city's most innovative artists for the past three or four or even five years. They've done this without making a big show of it; their music is buoyant and funny and skillfully direct. They do a lot with comparatively little. They give you energy and make it look easy.

    “h--- yeah,” Quavo says, hanging up his phone, his date having agreed to join him for Criss Angel’s act. “I’m trying to see some crazy s---.”

    Mike Tyson lives these days on some dark scrubland southeast of Vegas, past a couple of gates and a security guard. The Strip stands tall in the desert distance. Someone boards our van in order to remind Migos that Tyson is sober and they should refrain from smoking weed around him. Offset looks down at the blunt in his hand and nods. The three Migos sit silently for a while and then start talking about the reduced state of Tyson's menagerie. What it had (big cats) and what it has (pigeons). “The first man I seen with a tiger,” Quavo says.

    Their music is buoyant and funny and skillfully direct. They give you energy and make it look easy.

    Quavo says he's thinking about getting a tiger of his own, in that idle way people say things they have no intention of doing. He says he relates to Tyson—not exactly the prison-era Tyson, but the scarred, fragile, latter-day Tyson, who reads like an open book that can't shut itself: “It's beyond boxing. I really feel like he a great guy.” Quavo says people were too intimidated by Tyson in his prime to let him open up and be himself. They didn't give him a chance. He never really got to enjoy what he had.

    Offset looks out the window and reflects on how this is what success looks like: a house behind a gate behind another gate. “You see how special it is now, that we went No. 1?” he asks. “Most people don't make it to a second album. There's people out now, right now, older rappers, older artists, they ain't even made it to they second album. They ain't doing s---.”

    Offset has had time to meditate on this subject, the long arc of success. The uncomfortably high likelihood of failure for people who do what Migos do. For a while, the group couldn't get out of their own way. They'd have a hit, like 2012's “Bando” or 2013's “Versace,” and get hot, and then Offset would disappear: “I went to jail twice”—once in 2013, when he did nine months for a probation violation relating to a burglary charge, and then in 2015, when he served eight months on a subsequent parole violation. “I came out bigger the second time,” Offset says. “People don't do that. That s--- will wash your a--- out.”

    In 2015, Migos put out their debut album, Yung Rich Nation. It sold a disappointing 15,000 copies the week of its release. Even before that, they'd had the uncanny experience of watching things they'd popularized, like the dab, speed through pop culture without them. If you've noticed that rap music has leaned heavily on a triplet rhythm these past few years (that rising cadence, the one that sounds like the artist is going up a three-step escalator) or made hooks out of the same word (Versace Versace Versace) repeated several times: Migos. But the history of pop music is full of organ donors. For a while it seemed like Migos would be another one. “It's been a lot of times that I've been frustrated, just asking, ‘Why?’ ” Takeoff says.

    Offset spent much of that time watching Migos songs become hits while he sat in a cell. Then he came home famous. “I ain't get the opportunity to get coached until being a star,” Offset says now. “I came straight into this s---. The whole ‘Versace’ s---, I wasn't in the video. I missed out on all that. I came home as a star. I had a lot of money. I was wilding, I was being young, I was just living and experiencing life, though. So I ain't got no regrets. You got to grow up and mature when you see you've got something going for real.”

    Something you could jeopardize.

    “Yeah, it's a career! My momma proud of me. I failed some obstacles. Just being serious. Thank God I'm out of that.”

    [​IMG]
    (From Left) Jacket, $2,875, by Neil Barrett / Tank top, $39, by Champion Life / Sweatpants, $74, by Champion + UO / Sneakers, $60, by Vans / Socks by Huf / Vintage glasses by Ettore Bugatti / (OffSet) jacket $2,178 Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh / t-shirt $28 Adidas Originals / sweatpants $60 Champion Life / Sneakers, $140, by Jordan Brand / Sunglasses by Moscot

    Above the fireplace is a woodcut of Mike Tyson punching another man. The Migos rummage around inside the trophy case and come away hoisting Mike's belts.

    Here is an example of an obstacle, though I won't pretend to know all the details. Yesterday, outside a streetwear convention at the Sands Expo, they got involved in a confrontation with another artist, Sean Kingston. I'd been with them just minutes before this but had left through the front door. They went out the back, where a guy with Kingston apparently fired a gun in the air and was arrested. No one was injured. Today, Migos are not particularly inclined to disclose more than that.

    “You was there, man,” Takeoff says. (I was not.) “It wasn't nothing crazy. Then they go to putting the boost on it, just because I guess we got the name or whatever. Nothing actually happened. We actually came through and did what we had to do and left.”

    “I don't know nothing about no fight,” Quavo says of a TMZ report claiming that an altercation preceded the shot. But then he adds, almost as if to himself: “Now we know. We new to this, so we don't know. We up under this microscope now.”

    [​IMG]
    Sweatshirt $182 Umbro x House of Holland / Pants $45 Adidas / Sneakers $555 Off-White c/o Virgil Abloh / Socks Adidas Originals glasses / Moscot own custom watch Audemars Piguet

    [​IMG]
    Jacket, $132, t-shirt, $56, by Gosha Rubchinskiy x Sergio Tacchini / Teeth grill Johnny Dang & Co. / Own custom watch by Patek Philippe / Own custom jewelry (on all) from Avianne & Co. Jewelers

    Tyson, in a luxuriously pink leather jacket that he has clearly put on for this occasion, greets Migos at the door of his home, all Spanish tile and McMansion arches. He's maybe slightly shorter than you'd expect. He leads us through the house and out back, past the swimming pool and the palm trees, to where the pigeons are, in a coop that smells of freshly cut wood. Inside, you can hear the birds softly breathing. Tyson takes Migos through his collection—the males and the females, the rolling pigeons who do somersaults in the air.

    “And they come back?!” asks Quavo, incredulous. “They always come back?”

    Mike says they do. It's quiet for a moment. The Migos look at the pigeons, and the pigeons look back. Someone asks if any of these birds have names. “No,” Mike says sadly—a virus ravaged the guys back here, and ever since he can't bring himself to individuate the pigeons more than he has to. “It's real cool you guys came around, though,” he says.

    Back inside, he shows them his trophy case. It's in the corner of a big empty living room with giant ceilings, white leather couches, and a piano in the corner. On the mantel, above the fireplace, is a woodcut of Tyson punching another man. The Migos rummage around inside the trophy case and come away hoisting Mike's belts.

    Quavo regards the one he's holding. “Who you knocked out for that one?”

    “I don't know,” Mike answers gently. “Just a guy.”

    He shows Migos photos on his phone of cars he used to own. “That's how we were living, baby.” He says he sold the cars a long time ago. College tuition, he says. It takes a toll. “I'm old greatness,” he says. “You're new greatness.”

    Mike's 8-year-old daughter comes into the room. She sits down at the piano. She has curly hair, pink headphones, and pink sneakers. A silence falls as she begins to play—she later says the piece is Spanish; she can't pronounce the name. Whatever it is, it's beautiful. Mike and the Migos stand in a reverent semicircle, like four proud dads. “They're all here watching you!” Mike says. She does not seem bothered by this fact. Minutes stretch on, night setting in above the house. Quavo and Takeoff and Offset look respectfully into the middle distance as she works her way through the piece. When she's finished, Mike looks at her fondly. “That was very nice,” he says. The Migos enthusiastically agree. They take turns, kneeling to give Mike Tyson's daughter a hug.

    And then they leave, to go see some more magic.

    __________

    The article included a video as well which is not embeddable. You can watch it here though.



    @MigosFam (join here)
     
    Mar 19, 2024