Vice‘s music offshoot, Noisey, like its parent platform, has garnered significant acclaim for its numerous documentaries about musicians, both up-and-coming and established. However, the subjects of one of their most popular features are now alleging their doco was faked.
Back in January, Migos, the Atlanta hip-hop trio best known for their 2013 single ‘Versace’, were the stars of an episode of Noisey Atlanta, a 10-part documentary series chronicling the Georgia capital’s iconic hip-hop scene.
The episode quickly gained notoriety for scenes featuring the members of Migos, who were shown living in a gated neighbourhood in the suburb of Stockbridge, handling automatic weapons and large bags of cannabis. The episode has since been viewed almost two million times on YouTube.
In one particularly memorable scene, one of the members of the trio’s crew tells the filmmakers that the AR-15 (a semiautomatic rifle popular with the US armed forces and firearms enthusiasts) he is holding is “brand new out the box”.
However, as FACT reports, when asked about the documentary during a recent interview with ESPN’s Highly Questionable, members Quavo and Takeoff denied any involvement with the guns and said the feature was “a movie”.
“We still live in that country club but it was a movie, they put us in that house,” Quavo alleged in the interview, while Takeoff added, “It was a movie, we acted it out.” The pair claimed the documentary was in fact scripted and they were playing roles.
As readers can see in the footage above, when Highly Questionable host Dan Le Batard claimed he didn’t understand what the duo was implying, Quavo clarified, “It was roleplaying, that wasn’t our house in the first place.”
“They gave us a script, they gave me a script. I played it well ‘cos y’all think it was real,” Takeoff added. When pressed again by Le Batard, Quavo said certain aspects of the episode were real, like the fact that they record their hits in a closet, “but the guns, I wouldn’t say, nah.”
It’s important to note, however, that Offset, the third member of Migos absent during the interview, is currently serving a prison term for drug and gun possession, in fact blaming his arrest on Vice and Noisey, claiming he was “tricked” by filmmakers.
While Offset did not elaborate further on his comments, the claims made by Quvo and Takeoff in the ESPN interview should likely be taken with a grain of salt if the documentary was indeed used as evidence against their bandmate. Watch the episode in question below.
