Maya Rudolph jokes that she only went to college because of A Tribe Called Quest

When Maya Rudolph was a kid, she didn't think her musician parents were cool — except for one thing: their music was sampled on several songs by the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest.

"I felt so cool because it was a band that I liked and they thought that my parents were cool," the comedy actor tells Tom Power in a Q interview.

Rudolph's mom, Minnie Riperton, was a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter with a five-octave vocal range. Her father, Richard Rudolph, is a musician and songwriter who worked with artists like Stevie Wonder, Chaka Khan and The Temptations.

When Rudolph eventually met Q-Tip, one of the members of A Tribe Called Quest, she thanked him for sampling her parents' music — and sending those royalty cheques to them.

"That was always the joke that me and my dad would say: 'A Tribe Called Quest put you through college,'" the Saturday Night Live alumna says. 

Though Rudolph's parents focused their careers on music, they also exposed her to comedy. It used to be common for a musician and a comedian to open for each other or do shows together. Her mom would often tour alongside comedians such as Richard Pryor, the Smothers Brothers and Flip Wilson.

"Comedy and music are cousins," Rudolph says. "They're the same language, but spoken in two different ways."

Rudolph even followed in her parents' footsteps before she started in comedy. She sang back-up vocals for the rock band The Rentals after she finished college. The band even came to Canada and opened up for Alanis Morissette a few times on her Jagged Little Pill tour.

"We did a lot of hacky-sacking with her and her band," Rudolph says.

Despite her musical inclinations and her very cool musician parents, Rudolph viewed music as something that was her parents' thing, not hers.

"Anything that comes from your house is embarrassing," she says.

Eventually, Rudolph admitted to herself that her parents are very cool.

She even pays homage to her mom and dad in the second season of Loot, the show Rudolph stars in and executive produces. In one of her character's scenes, audiences can hear A Tribe Called Quest's Can I Kick It? playing in the background.

Loot follows Molly Novak (played by Rudolph), who receives an $87 billion divorce settlement from her ex-husband. She now has to figure out what to do with all this money, and turns to her own charitable foundation to try and use it for good.

"This idea of creating a character who wants to help, but has been coming from a place of just spending the wealth and enjoying the wealth, has been a great opportunity to talk about things that are going on in the world," Rudolph says.

The full interview with Maya Rudolph is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Maya Rudolph produced by Ben Edwards.