MADE YOU LOOK
The Roots continued
Photo courtesy of Def Jam
Published: June 18, 2008
In national reports on Philly, there’s one vision circulating of a city in crisis with an alarming and climbing murder rate, and another of a city with all of this supposed cultural renewal and growth. How do you feel about those two narratives?
Well, I’m locked in between the two. I’m in a privileged position, so I’m protected as far as my location is. And just common sense tells me that it really wouldn't behoove me to be anywhere in which my life could be in danger. I love Philly but I’m very much aware that it is the murder capital of the United States. I still tell people Philly’s a great place to live. I say make sure you’re protected. If anything, I had to make some adjustments. For starters, getting all my loved ones out of their neighborhoods and into safe neighborhoods.That was # 1.
Something else that stands out is the inclusion of the past phone conversations to open and close the record. It came across not just as a way to talk about ongoing label problems, but also think about the past in this nostalgic way.
Any interlude on the record was a contextual reminder. I mean, there’s different ways to handle a celebration. You could do the Michael Jackson thing and have a whole bunch of artists come and pay tribute to you on television. Or you can have one of those “Family Ties,” “Cosby Show” clip episodes. But really, it’s kind of weird because I had to use an argument about the label to sort of school people that we don’t bitch about being on the label. I would go from place to place, and people would be like, ‘Yo man, why is Jay-Z fucking you all up?’ I’m trying to explain to them, the whole industry is fucked up. That said, I kinda wanted to school people on the fact that you thought times were great for the Roots, and now they’re on Def Jam and talking about how fucked up life is. I wanted to show them the exact opposite, how everyday there was a conversation like that.
What about the recovery of the teenage Black Thought freestyle “@15”?
I felt people still didn't know Tariq. A lot of critics, especially with this record and the last record, they are needlessly, unnecessarily gunning for him. What’s even crazier is that they can’t see their own addiction to what I see as the Neo-Minstrelsy movement taking over. I’ve seen shit like, ‘Why doesn't Black Thought sound happy?’ I don’t know, I take offense to that. Like, these aren’t happy times for people, whether we care to open our eyes or not.
Well, what would it take for Tariq to get his propers?
I read one review in Entertainment Weekly where the guy said we got a B- for songwriting, and I’m like songwriting? I’ve looked in the Top 10 and that’s what we’re supposed to compete with? It’s like America doesn't even know half the time why they like some stuff. They just think, ‘Oh, I like the beat and it’s nice.’ No, it’s like we’ve been trained since the beginning of American entertainment that minstrel entertainment is more acceptable from black people than any kind of serious disposition. I know it sounds harsh to say, but it’s like America has this fixation on it.
The answers are he would have to put a lot of inflections in his vocals and he would have to deliver them in a way that’s sort of happy go lucky, as to not appear threatening or a downer. Unless people are willing to take the time out to sort of take hip-hop serious enough to study it, they’re not going to know anything about contextualizing. How many people today that even review records have any reference to Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap to understand, like, ‘Okay, this is where he’s taking off from and this is where the baton has gone’? They might see us as pretentious. We’re the only people I’ve ever seen get shot down by bloggers for naming the albums after books, or for particular album covers, or Tariq sounds boring, or that type of thing. It’s just like, no. If I spent my time over-saturating my palette with a particular type of MC, then yeah.
In addition to the phone calls and freestyles, you have hundreds of unreleased tracks, like “Birthday Girl,” which nearly made this album. Why keep such a large archive?
No, we just record a lot. It’s not like, ‘Hey let’s have an archive so in case we die or some fucked up shit happens we’ll have stuff left over.’ We’re just under the impression that... if I can create and force myself to do 40-50 songs, then six of them might actually be bangers. And then what happens to the other 44 songs? They just go in the archives and they sit and they marinate. Some of them come back. “Birthday Girl” was such a song. It was a Tipping Point-era jam session song that was so happy go lucky.
One thing I never shared with anyone was, probably the real deal, even more than just giving Def Jam something to work with -- we kind of thought that this whole double entendre song was a way to show that we kind of had a sense of humor and that we weren’t all that serious, all that Debbie Downer-ish. And maybe this could be the light heartedness that could come on the next record. I like to leave the last song to preview what the next direction is, not saying it’s gonna be a whole album of mindless pop songs, but just kind of showing people we’re not all that serious, 24/7.
Is the recording of that type of music really in the future for the next Roots album or just more fodder for your archives?
I pretty much have it set already that I am going to go light-hearted with it. I’ve been dying to do a concept record for the longest, sort of on the level of how Prince Paul did the Prince of Thieves back in ’99. There’s a gazillion ideas that we haven t done yet - an all singing record, an all instrumental record, a traditional hip-hop album where it’s just like all samples, that type of thing. There’s a gazillion ideas of things we haven’t done that we will eventually, just one album at a time.
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