ARTICULATION’S for lorries: leave musicians to knock out beats. It’s a fact not often noted that music men make better tracks than they do interview subjects. Take Ian Curtis in Control – the recent film about Joy Division. In one scene, a journalist is interviewing his band and asks them what inspires them: While the rest of the band crack innuendos, Curtis simply stares at his questioner with a mute, intense gaze, as if the divine content of his muse was far too unwieldy to pass through something as lowly as his voice box.
This does occasionally occur tome when interviewing ?uestlove, the drum-beating heart of the Grammy-winning, multi million selling Roots crew. However, for the occasional meanderings, he strikes at the heart of an uncomfortable truth –that a succesful African-American artist, living in a post-Obama world, still feels like a black man in a white man’s world.
“It’s about time that the US reconsiders its position and how they view us,” he says. “There are a lot of things that people haven’t been paying attention to with black culture that they’re just starting to notice.”
Strange to say, from a band that’s behind a music phenomenon, a fusion of rap and rock that has taken hip hop away from intimidation and left millions of fans dancing to their joyful improvisations. The Roots are much more than a hip hop band – in 1999 they were responsible for an generation collectively falling in love with Erykah Badu through her honey-smooth rendition of You Got Me. The song tells the story of a love affair between Black Thought, the group’s lead rapper and a mythical girl, all conducted under the duress of a life lived touring the world. ?uestlove may globe-trot, but the Philadelphia man always finds time to get back to his adoptive roots – in Kentish Town.
“I lived in Queen’s Crescent for years! I love going to Camden Market on the weekends. When I’m in London I make sure I get a day off and go there.” The Roots would busk on the streets back then, communing with the slate pavements of Camden before putting out their debut, Organix. Black Thought is a rapper’s rapper whose wholesale syllable slaughter is up on YouTube – when he walks down the street with ?uestlove, ?uestlove randomly points out objects – each one is then expertly rhymed about by Black. ?uestlove isn’t bothered by Black Thought being sidelined by the mainstream media:
“Hey crack was a very popular drug – it doesn’t mean I should be one of the millions of people doing it. Journalists often play the popularity game. It makes them look as if they know what the pulse of the world is.” The Roots are most famous for their live performances, thanks to their intelligent rhymes and truly diverse instrumental performances – their entire 10-plus band played the drums simultaneously at a recent show in Paris. Sonically, they’ve grabbed the shaker and emerged with a rock funk-jazz cocktail to knock the socks off the no-rap-please-we’re-English brigade.
When asked whether he’s pressured to put out a certain type of music because of his record label, [Def Jam] ?uestlove laughs like I’ve hit a nerve: “Not really, there is no pressure. However record companies just can’t afford to lose a Rock & Pop prestige artist, people like Bob Dylan. “Black music is only used by record companies in terms of monetary gain – because you’re only ever as good as whatever money you made me before.”
Ouch. Throughout the interview, ?uestlove’s plaintive tone is indicative of a racial raw deal that is reflected in the group’s latest album, Rising Down, released to coincide with the 16th anniversary of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. “Rising Up is the sound of the US. It talks about drug usage in Philadelphia, about school violence, terrorism, the US Army. It’s every angle of concern we have. We felt that there wasn’t some balanced rapping about what’s going on in the US.”
This is the second dark, political album in a row for the Roots, after Game Theory in 2006. On tour, the Roots have visited each country in Europe at least 10times, and the jaded feeling shines through: “The strangest thing that I’ve seen over the years that I’ve been touring is to see the cultural colonization that occurs in countries. For all the talk about Russia, the first thing you see when you go there is a big KFC.”
?uestlove’s afro radiates from his head like a black halo, a martyred saint for black music –touted on the back of his latest hit by the labels, who pay for him to bring the case of the black man. But he doesn’t take himself that seriously – “I’m as normal as it comes – I just look pretty weird.”
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