The Roots by @iamsuede
Whether it’s as Jimmy Fallon’s house band, Philadelphia’s most famous hip-hop group, or the geniuses behind 1999’s haunting Grammy-winning track You Got Me, you almost certainly know The Roots. Formed in 1987 by high school classmates Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, the group brought together jazzy live instrumentals with incisive, often politically conscious rhymes. Their influence on the genre cannot be overstated, and they’ve remained a cultural force for decades. The group’s makeup has evolved over the years, but Questlove and Black Thought remain the backbone. Black Thought is considered by many to be the best freestyle rapper of all time. His lyricism and breath control are astounding. He’s a family man, philanthropist, and the owner of a truly magnificent beard. This Sunday, The Roots bring the group's All The Way Live tour to a close at The Factory in Chesterfield. SLM caught up with Black Thought between The Tonight Show rehearsals and tour stops.
You’ve kept incredibly busy during the pandemic, with a wide range of projects: interviewing artists across multiple disciplines and reading from your favorite literary works on the Streams of Thought w/Black Thought series, releasing Thought vs. Everybody—The Visual Reckoning, creating the biographical 7 Years words and music project with Audible, preparing for this fall’s School of Thought masterclass at Carnegie Hall... How did you keep so productive and stretch so far creatively? Yeah, you know, I feel like just the way we as humans process trauma and loss and crisis and anything that sort of shocks the system in that way, anything that sort of disrupts our regular routine in that way, I feel like it has the potential to affect us in one of two ways: It can either stop you in your tracks, jack you up, and make it so you’re not able to continue, or it becomes a motivating factor in your life. For me, this moment of pause has been motivational in that way. It’s been a chance for me to draw closer to my family and to the other members of The Roots and our collective, and to dive deeper into self.
For me, I think what appeals most to me about working outside of my comfort zone, my regular sort of Roots bubble, is the opportunity to extend myself in a different direction. So collaborative efforts with institutions like Carnegie Hall—which is just a legendary, historical landmark, which means so much to so many people—it’s a dope opportunity. It’s the sort of thing I don’t take for granted, that these opportunities are always going to present themselves. It hasn’t always been that way. While that’s an option, I find it most efficient and effective for me to just keep maintaining that full plate. I just sort of chip away at multiple projects at once—many different irons in the fire, so to speak.
It’s rewarding for me to see how appreciative my audience is of the candor and of when I am sort of particularly introspective or vulnerable, transparent, honest, open; it always resonates with the audience in a different way. They always ask for more. I try to give it to folks in doses—I don’t want to be a sap; I don’t want to only sing sad songs that are about my heart and soul. It’s a delicate balance.
You’ve been back in studio for The Tonight Show for a while, but how is touring going—and how is that different for you and for The Roots? You know, we keep speaking of things that we take for granted. I keep speaking to that gratitude. It’s something that’s very real. I’m just super, super thankful. I just feel that The Roots has been so very blessed to have been able to continue to create, to connect with our audience, to continue to work throughout this time. So many people, we’ve all lost friends and family. We’ve all lost normalcy and certainty. So any inkling of that, anything that sort of reminds us of what that used to feel like, anything that reminds us of the dynamic between artist and the audience. Tomorrow, it isn’t promised. If recent months and years have taught us anything, it’s not only is tomorrow not promised, nothing is promised.
In your project with Audible, 7 Years, you say everything reinvents every seven years. You’ve had a front-row seat for most of hip-hop as an art form—you told The Paris Review that you and the breakbeat were invented at the same time. Does hip-hop also move in seven-year cycles? I think artistically, musically, with regards to what’s going on in film and theater and everywhere else, we experience the same sort of cycle. It’s there. It’s about whether or not we dial into it, or how deep we dial into it, how much we dive into it. There’s so much going on in the world, in the universe, in the community, in our space, in our face that we may or may not be aware of. Everyone’s perception is different.
What era are we in right now? The age of reinvention, re-envisioning. We’re definitely post-very many things, which I feel like is almost a good thing. The fact that we are post-administration, post-whatever—you fill in the blank—it speaks to us having made it through. We’re also still very mid-many different other things. It’s the way shit sort of plays out. We’re post-Trump, mid-pandemic, and 20 other things I could name.
How important is where we’re from? I can’t think of you or The Roots without thinking of Philly, but we’re so globally interconnected now. Does it matter anymore? For me, it matters very much. It’s important to me that my story remains a Philadelphia story. For some people, it’s not where you’re from, it’s where you’re at. For me, and for people who think the way I think, it’s where you’re from that’s what’s going to instill in you the fundamentals, what your trajectory is going to be, how you process information in the world. I have a Philadelphian perspective—my approach, my confidence, the way I approach other people, my sense of style, my sense of self, the influences that manifest themselves in my music and The Roots’ music. Everything about me, I would hope for one to feel as though I were, as though all things about me were connectable in some way to the city of Philadelphia, to my history, my legacy, which is Philadelphia.
The Roots perform at The Factory in Chesterfield this Sunday, September 5 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $59.50–$89.50, plus fees. Proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test are required for entry.
