Oral History Of ‘Ed Lover And Doctor Dré ‘Who’s The Man’ Film

When thinking of rap-centric films, movies like Wild Style, Krush Groove, Breakin’, Beat Street, House Party, Belly and How High are among the usual suspects. Yet, one flick that occasionally gets lost in the shuffle is Who’s the Man, a the 1993 thriller comedy that captured the essence of hip-hop culture and galvanized its community.

Directed by Ted Demme, Who’s the Man stars Yo! MTV Raps hosts Doctor Dré and Ed Lover, who portray two lackadaisical barbers that find themselves working as New York City police officers on a quest to take down nefarious figures doing damage to the streets of Harlem.

Taking a page out of the book of the aforementioned films, Who’s the Man included cameos from an array of high-profile rap talent, with Ice-T, Naughty By Nature, Guru, Run-D.M.C., Busta Rhymes, Heavy D, KRS-One, Queen Latifa, Heavy D, Phife Dawg and others among the acts that pop up throughout the film—a testament to Doctor Dré and Ed Lover’s cache and the allure of bringing hip-hop to the big-screen.

Upon its release on April 23, 1993, Who’s the Man opened the weekend at No. 2 at the box office and grossed over $11 million domestically, yet again proving the drawing and buying power of hip-hop, which has only gotten stronger since.

To commemorate the anniversary of this unsung classic, VIBE spoke to Ed Lover about how the making of Who’s the Man, the rap and comedic talent involved, what societal issues inspired it and its legacy as the quintessential hip-hop whodunit film.

VIBE: How did the idea of you and Doctor Dre being cast as leads in your own movie originally come about and what year do you recall the idea first being presented to the two of you?

Ed Lover: Well, I wrote the initial story and I told Dre about it – I had the initial idea. Dre and I sat and talked about it and expounded on it, elaborated, figured out which way we actually wanted to go with it and then presented it to our manager, Charles Stettler and he took it to New Line [Cinema] and got New Line interested in us making a movie.

What even made you think to write the movie?

Because everybody had always said that Dre and I was like Abbott and Costello. And I always wanted to do a movie like that, that show the police in a different light, have fun with it and it was always something I always wanted to do, kinda like a Smokey and the Bandit type of thing where they always had a lot of cameos and I figured it would be a good way to do something like that where you could include a lot of different artists in different roles.

Who’s the Man came out in 1993. When did the process start?

Gee, probably like ’90-’91. Cause I think we shot in ’92 and it came out the following year so I probably started like ’90, really. From the initial concept of the movie until getting in front of the cameras, late ’91-’92.

Being that you and Doctor Dre had no prior acting experience, how big of a transition was it from being a host on Yo! MTV Raps to acting in a movie and how did the two of you prepare for it?

I think a lot of it was just natural ability. We always had a dialect coach in on set and a little acting coach there, you know, we did a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but that was just natural, man. You know, we were playing us [laughs], so it’s not like we had to go into nothing too deep, but just remember your dialogue and all of that stuff. So it was pretty natural, man, it was a natural transition for the both of us.

What made you decide to set Who’s the Man in Harlem, as opposed to Brooklyn, Bronx or Queens?

You know what that stemmed from? That stemmed from the re-gentrification of Harlem that I noticed. The movie was really more about the re-gentrification of Harlem than what people give it credit for. You watch the movie, you see the guy was running around burning buildings down or whatever he owned, doing things and burning buildings down to force people out.

It just so happened that when we got to New Line, New Line wanted to put the oil underneath the buildings to put a little funny spin on it, but it was about what’s going on in every community right now that used to be a black community. At the time it wasn’t going so hard in Brooklyn or in Queens, it was going on in Harlem so that’s why we set it in Harlem.

Being that hip-hop’s relationship with law enforcement has been strained throughout its history, whose idea was it to cast you as police officers and what was your initial reaction?

That came from my brother, man. My brother was a New York City police officer for 25 years. It just came from seeing my brother outside of the uniform and my line of thinking at the time was we always wanna change something about the police but when the police test come around the neighborhood, nobody wanna take it.

And we ended up passing it because nobody wanted to be “The Man.” You wanna change the way the police think about you, but you don’t wanna be the police. So we kinda stumble into being the police because Nick [character from Who’s the Man] pulls some strings and gets us in the police academy in the movie. So that was pretty much based on my brother who was a cop at the time.

Talking about the title Who’s the Man, was that taken from blaxploitation flicks?

Absolutely. I was a big fan of Blaxploitation movies and Cotton Comes To Harlem and all of these other movies like that and Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do It Again and that’s what it was about, it’s like ‘who’s the man?’ Who’s the man that’s really a cop, who’s the man that’s doing dirt in the community, who’s the man that blew up the barbershop.

Who’s the Man is largely remembered for casting a multitude of rappers. Was that always the plan from the start or did that happen organically?

Absolutely, that was always Dre and I’s dream was to give a platform for the artists to be in a major motion picture like that. Cause like I told you, I like Smokey and the Bandit, the airplane movies and all of that stuff that you would never know who’s gonna show up in whatever role, you know? And we just wanted to duplicate that, but on a hip-hop side.

Getting all of those rappers together with all of their conflicting schedules must not have been an easy task, how did y’all manage to pull that off?

Most of the people were really cooperative and 99% of them got themselves there and got themselves home. They just wanted be a part of what we were doing because we had helped so many people with Yo! MTV Raps that when we made them calls – I didn’t even have to pick up the phone -when the whole staff made them calls from the office and all of that, it wasn’t much of a struggle to get anybody, man.

Who were some of the rappers you remember reaching out to first?

I think it was Run D.M.C. man those guys always showed me a lot of love. You know, we wanted LL, but his schedule wouldn’t permit at the time, but Run D.M.C. probably the first ones that we reached out to. Them and Kriss Kross because me and Jermaine was really tight and then him and his father, Mike Mauldin, took me out on the Kriss Kross Tour. So Kriss Kross and Run D.M.C. were probably the first one. And Naughty [By Nature] of course, that was a given.

Do you still have conversations about Who’s the Man with any of the artists involved and what are those moments like?

Oh my god, all the time, man. From talking to Ice-T about his scene when he was playing Chauncey and Monie Love was in the bar with him. After Chris Kelly [of Kriss Kross] died and seeing Chris Smith [of Kriss Kross] and him and I reminiscing about when they were in the movie.

When you see Leaders of the New School, Busta always laughs about when I pulled them over and they had the smoke and everything coming out the car. For me to just watch the movie sometimes and see that we had Jam Master Jay in it and Big Stretch was in a scene standing next to KRS-One? And Heavy D was in the movie, you know what I mean? We had so many artists.

Salt-N-Pepa, still good friends, whenever I get a chance to see them, we always laugh about Pepa slapping me or Yoyo slapping me  cause I let them slap me for real because that was the only way we was gonna get it right. So, you know, doing all of that stuff, we still laugh about that stuff whenever I see ’em, we always laugh about it.

In addition to casting rappers, you also showcased comedians like Bernie Mac and Bill Bellamy, giving them their first movie roles of their career..

And [Queen] Latifah. I think she had played a waitress in Jungle Fever and then her next movie was Who’s the Man.

What was it like giving them their first start?

Let me tell you something, them two, especially Bernie Mac, everyday was nothing but laughter. Off camera, sitting around waiting to shoot, everybody in their trailers hanging out. Bernie had me cracking the f**k up every single day. Especially when we were shooting barbershop scenes, oh my God. There was so many great outtakes from that movie.

I wish somebody would put it all together. I believe New Line [Cinema] still got it, man, and just do like an extended version with all the outtakes. We had Colin Quinn in that movie. If you could see the elongated scenes of Doctor Dre and I with Dennis Leary, some of the funniest sh*t you’ve ever seen in your life. I’m very very proud of that.

How did those two get in the movie?

We saw Bernie on Def [Comedy] Jam. I used to hang out with Derrick Coleman that played on the New Jersey Nets and Martin Lawrence and Martin Lawrence used to hang with us and Kid ‘n Play. So meeting Bernie at Def Comedy Jam, when it came time to cast somebody, I was like ‘we gotta get this dude in.’

Bill Bellamy has always been my guy from New Jersey. We used to go and see Bill at the Lenox Lounge, so I always wanted to do something with Bill. Bill is super-talented dog and one of the nicest guys in the business and been around for a long time. So I just knew that I had to have Bill and Bernie cause they’re funny, these are funny men.

One wrinkle that made Who’s the Man ahead of its time was its underlying commentary on urban renewal and gentrification in New York City, which has become a hot-button topic over the last decade. How important was it to shed light on that particular issue that has and continues to affect the city?

I saw that it was coming. Like we frequent all over the place, so we going up to Harlem and we’re going to 125th Mart that used to be right there and getting jewelry from my man the legendary Blue right there and hanging out at The Apollo and then you start and seeing more and more and more of other cultures that live in Harlem and I was like ‘wow, like Harlem is really getting gentrified.’

And then you just had a lot of people complaining that they’re making this neighborhood nice and it’s too nice for us to live here anymore so I just really wanted to make a statement about it right before it really exploded, but as it stands right now man, gentrification is happening in these communities. People say its because it’s cause the river’s here or this is here or that is here, I think hip-hop had a lot to do with gentrification cause back when my parents came up from the south and we moved to Queens, all the white people moved to Long Island.

They went further out in Long Island and they took Metro-North in or they took a Long Island Railroad in, but hip-hop kinda bridged that gap when everybody kinda knew each other’s cultures. And these white kids grew up on Hip-Hop so they started hanging out at hip-hop clubs and doing sh*t like that and they weren’t afraid anymore so when they grow up and they get jobs and they in the city, they don’t wanna go to Ronkonkoma for two hours everyday on the train, you know what I mean?

So they’re like ‘I could stay right here in Harlem and it’s 15 minutes away from Wall Street, Midtown or wherever they work, so they slowly but surely started moving in. Now you know when they start moving in, they got money and they’re gonna attract other people with money, so the landlords are gonna try to put the people out that’s been there all the time. It’s not the people’s fault that wanna live here but it’s the landlords that own the building.

That figure, ‘I can get more money for this apartment than I been getting from this lady that’s been spending $800 a month for the last 20 years. I know I can get $1,500-$2,000 for the same apartment.’ So they started displacing people. It’s not the white people fault that wanna live there, they just wanna be closer to work and they been cool with our culture. MTV and Yo! MTV Raps had a lot to do with that, we put hip-hop in white people’s homes all over the world.

In recent years, it seems that the ensemble hip-hop film has kinda gone out of style. What do you feel has factored into that?

I know they did Belly a few years ago and now Little X got Superfly that has a lot of hip-hop talent, but if I had my way bro, and I had the ear of New Line, I would love to do a Who’s the Man 2 with the up-to-date talent in it.

Has there ever been talks of a Who’s the Man sequel?

Years ago we talked of a sequel and it just never came to fruition for one reason or another, but we always wanted to do it.

The Who’s the Man soundtrack was also a success, peaking at No. 8 on the R&B Albums chart. Did you and Doctor Dre oversee the soundtrack and how did you go about handpicking the artists and songs involved?

Yeah, Doctor Dre and I had to sign off on any and everything that had something to do with Who’s the Man. Each and every thing. And there was a bidding war for that soundtrack, we chose Uptown because I respected what Andre was doing and I knew Puff and I knew Puff was gonna make it hot.

Puff was young, he was living around the corner from me in Hackensack and I would really vibe with Puff, man, for a long time for everything that he’s done. Our moms have been cool for years, both of our mothers and I wanted to do this over at Uptown because Andre had that ear. And Heavy was my dog, man.

My closest friend in the whole world of hip-hop was Heavy D and what they were doing over there and what I knew that Uptown would do, I knew it would be a smash. And nothing against Def Jam, but I just loved the vibe of Uptown at the time.

They had Jodeci and Mary was on that soundtrack and Heavy was on that soundtrack and Biggie was on that soundtrack, man, so I was really happy with the way the soundtrack came out. That’s back when if you did a black movie, you had to have a banging a** soundtrack.

The Who’s the Man Soundtrack is notable in large part for “Party & Bullshit,” The Notorious B.I.G.‘s first single. What was your first time hearing the track and your impression of it?

I had heard of Biggie through The Source Magazine. I had heard of him so I already knew he was dope but when they came to the office and they played the “Party & Bullshit” man, his flow was impeccable, man.

Everything that he was doing on that track was impeccable but when I heard that ‘hold up, chill chill chil’ and they stopped and he came back like ‘can’t we just all get along, so I can put hickies on her chest like Lil Shawn,’ I was like ‘yo, this shit is a smash.’

When I heard “Party & Bullshit,” I was like ‘ yo, this the one that’s gonna stand out.’ In the annals, when it’s all said and done, people are always gonna talk about that record right there.

Looking back, what would you say are your three greatest memories from making Who’s the Man that stand out to you?

Barbershop scenes, definitely, with Bernie Mac, man. Precinct scenes with Dennis Leary and for me, personally, the robbery scene stands out ‘cause we had a lot of fun doing that with Naughty performing. And when Bernie Mac took over collecting the money at the front door to me is one of the funniest fucking scenes in the damn movie man.

I just had a good time overall. Me and Dre in front of the TV with the same pajamas on I thought was funny, I thought the roll-call part was funny, there’s a lot of stuff with Who’s the Man that we wanted to do, but we just didn’t have the budget to do it. Like we wanted to take you through the whole police academy training, but we just didn’t have enough of a budget, man.

I just feel good man, I’m still very proud of that movie and that was a big debut movie for Dre and I. Unfortunately, it got released the same weekend the Rodney King verdict came out so most of our white fans stayed away from the theater, but we were still the No. 1 comedy in America that weekend and we got two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert, which I can live with for the rest of my life.

Ted Demme, who you also worked with on Yo! MTV Raps, was the director of Who’s the Man and would go on to direct films like Life and Blow prior to his death in 2002. Can you speak on that experience and your relationship?

He was a visionary, man. Ted had did a short film, [but] Who’s the Man was his directorial debut of a feature-length film.  We had to fight New Line. I had to literally tell New Line if Ted’s not directing this movie, I’m not doing it. Like, I had to threaten them to make them let Ted do this movie.

Me and Dre threatened to walk out, that’s how loyal we were to Ted, we would not have done that movie without Ted Demme. When he passed, man, I found myself sitting there around all of these great actors and actresses that were there to say goodbye to Ted and their relationship with Ted.

And I just knew that my relationship was even more special than theirs was cause I was sitting there with Ted’s college buddies that I’ve known since I was 16-17 years old, man. So it was a beautiful thing and no one can take that away from us.

Where do you feel Who’s the Man ranks in the pantheon of hip-hop flicks 25 years later?

I’ll put it up there in the Top 10 ‘cause it was the first hip-hop whodunit and that’s something that no one can take away from us. I thought it was a good movie, we didn’t spend a lot of money on it and it looks like we spent a lot of money on it. It was fun, man, it was a lot of fun.