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Interview Podcast

The Roots have long held an odd-men-out place in the world of hip-hop.

Fads come and go, ringtone rap reigns supreme, and the Philly hip-hop collective continues to tour incessantly and release records that are multidimensional, thought-provoking, and almost guaranteed to fall on deaf ears in terms of widespread commercial success--despite a rabid, cult-like following.

But if there was ever a time for a new record, 2008 is it, amidst a hotly contested primary election, the economy in the dumps, and mindless music dominating the airwaves. Rising Down, the group's 10th album, hit stores this week. Drummer, musical mastermind, and artful conversationalist ?uestlove spoke to MP3.com at length on the eve of the album's release.

We touched on both the political and the musical, from his hometown in the spotlight during the Pennsylvania primary and the conundrum facing the Democratic Party to Rising Down, the whereabouts of D'Angelo, and the forthcoming Al Green record he produced.

MP3.com: Hey Ahmir. Hey, Jim. What's up, man? How are you doing? I'm good, man. How are you doing? Not too bad. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me. I appreciate it. Oh, you're welcome, man. So, where are you at right now? Are you in Philly? No, hoo, hoo, I wish. Philly is like a vacation. You're not going to game three [of the 76ers-Pistons NBA Playoff series], huh? Yeah, someone got my tickets, man. I'm mad as hell. Of course, I'm not going to say what I want to say. I wish them--quote, unquote, "I wish them the best of luck."

No, I just left Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and now I'm in--where am I at? I got to look on the telephone--oh, Charlotte, North Carolina. Oh, OK. So, are you guys doing a promo tour right now? We're on the road 300 days of the year. So, every day's a promo tour for me. Got it. I know you got the [Erykah] Badu thing coming up in early May. And there's some other promo shows coming up. Yeah. So, you're just doing a lot of that stuff right now, basically? Yeah. There is an actual touring schedule for the working musician, and usually April/May is what we call the spring-fling wrap-up. Basically, in our world, this is our pay-the-mortgage run, as I call it. [Laughs] Yeah, exactly, pay the bills. April, May, and then September, October. Those are the four most important months of our lives. Right. That's where all the bills get paid, I guess, right? Absolutely. So, I wanted to ask about the [Roots' performance of the] "Star Spangled Banner" on The Colbert Report. Had you guys done the instrument-thrashing thing before, or was that the first time? Yeah, that was obviously the first time. I won a lot of money that day because I'm looking at those instruments and I'm looking at their bodies, and I'm like, "Have you guys smashed a guitar before?" That's what I was going to ask: whether you gave [bassist] Owen [Biddle] any heat, because I don't think he had any success at all on smashing that bass. [Laughs] [Laughs] Yeah, we were laughing to death. I told Kirk that it would take him five attempts. Is that what it took him? [Laughs] He claims that it was four, but I looked at the playback, and he stopped at six. So, right now, the $100 is sort of based on, "Did you say when I would stop smashing the guitar, or when it would break?" [Laughs] Right. So, right now, we're at a standoff. They could have gone the Hulk Hogan route where you wear a T-shirt that's already ripped so that it's an easier play. Right. Exactly. Of course, then he had to play it, so, you know. Exactly. You can't play the broken instrument. What's your perspective on Pennsylvania, and Philly in particular, getting so much attention in the last six weeks with all the Democratic primary coverage? Well, we were told already that--oh, my God. I'm sorry. Oh, s***. I'm looking at the news. A pregnant teller got shot, and she had twins and they both died. Ah, man, that's terrible. I didn't even see that. In Indianapolis. Oh, my f***ing lord. [As for Pennsylvania], that's [Hillary Clinton's] hometown, and I would have been disappointed in her if she lost her own hometown, even though I'm supporting Obama. [Laughs] If she lost her home state, that's bad news for her. Yeah, exactly. If anything, I'm learning from this. This is showing me new levels of patience that not even Job would adhere to. [Laughs] OK. There are a lot of holes that you could dig into her. Oh, yeah. No one knows that Reverend Wright was the spiritual counselor for these two after Lewinskygate. Oh, really? Interesting. He was introduced to them. He was sort of brought into it to be a spiritual counselor but, of course, they're not necessarily focusing on that. And I admire [Obama] for not even stooping to her level. I mean sometimes the higher road is the longer road, right? Well, I'm hoping that America sees that he is indeed playing the high road in this. Some of them see it. I'm just a little disappointed, because I was a staunch supporter of both Clintons back in '92/'93. And now, I don't know how I feel. I'll say maybe four or five weeks ago, I could see, maybe, a co-billing with those two. Yeah, probably not now though, right? It's definitely at a point of no return. I'm shocked. This is a shock to me more than anything. I just think in the long run, I feel like he's going to take North Carolina, and Indiana is right next to Chicago. Yeah. Yeah, I have a good feeling. Right now, he has a 10-point lead over her, at least in the projections. I just feel like, in the long run, she's just pretty much going to have to face the inevitable that he might win by the skin of his teeth. Right. And if she takes this all the way to November, every day [John] McCain's media trainer is making him look better and better and better. Yeah, exactly. Like back when he last ran, when he was the hard-hearted Democrat that people knew about. But now, you're starting to see the stars in his eyes and the fact that they're obviously taking advantage of these two bickering with each other. Yeah, for sure. And I'm starting to see him now get that Reagan glow, that sort of fatherly, paternal. Right. "It's all going to be OK." "I know what's best for us." Right. And I'm like, "Not again, please." I don't know. Yeah, I hear you. Well, hopefully, there'll be some level of decisiveness in two weeks. And maybe we can all start focusing on the big dance and stop talking about this one. We'll see. Someone predicted this morning when I was getting dressed that gas will probably be $5 a gallon by late 2009. Yeah, it's not out of the question by any means. Crazy. Yeah. So if you had to pick one thing, whether it's substance or style, that has most drawn you to Obama, what would it be? Well, once I knew that I was going to be asked a lot politician questions, I was like, "Well, let me do my thorough research." [Laughs] Right. Sure. I went to the point where I did my research so thoroughly that I actually wound up working for him. But I don't want to discount Senator Clinton, because those two pretty much are neck and neck on at least 80 percent with their ideology and what they believe in. Sure. But there are three specific areas that I've heard him speak on--subjects that matter to me--that I've not heard a specific answer from her, or at least she hasn't been asked, or she hasn't posted on her website. Number one, I'm very much concerned about prison industries. Yeah, the industrial complex and all that. Yeah, just the whole idea of what I see as modern day slavery. Yeah, for sure. There are about 30 or 40 major corporations right now that use prison industries for minor work. I didn't know until recently that Victoria's Secret uses them to make the metal [bra] clasps. No, I didn't know that either. Wow. For the bras, yeah. And zippers for clothing companies as well. That concerns me a little. Once I did more research, I didn't know that George H. W. Bush allowed that idea that prisons--instead of being for state industry--that they actually can let private companies come in and do business. That concerns me a lot because, of course, why build a factory then? I can see it now. In Detroit, there'd be prisons and General Motors can just operate our prisons. Right. Yeah. Pay everybody four cents an hour. Obama has also mentioned New Jersey's problem with the driving while black issue--racial profiling.

And, lastly, the abolishment of the Rockefeller laws up in New York City in which--during the crack epidemic of '85/'86/'87--pretty much anybody caught with crack was given harsher sentences than those slapped on the wrist for cocaine offenses. And so it's just the whole double standard of drug laws that have plagued New York City.

Those are the small things, but those things can change someone's life. Absolutely. Yeah. Not to mention that one of the last things that he did in Chicago was mandate DNA testing for prisoners on death row. And that's had a big impact already. Yeah, absolutely. And the fact that he's said that he would continue to make sure that it applies to all states. That's pretty much his mission. I, for one, am very much in agreement with that because I think that a lot of overcrowded prisons are full of some people that can't even afford adequate defense, and the fact that some people that are in jail that don't deserve to be there because they've had to deal with an overworked public defender or whatever.

Prison issues concern me the most. My grandmother was one of 22 children. And she herself had 13 children. And of all the scores and scores and scores and scores of grandkids--and when I say scores, I mean up in the 90s--I'm the only male of my grandmother's grandchildren; I'm one of six males alive and not in jail. Wow. And a lot of my cousins are falling under the prison system. And what's even more frightening about it is that some of them are able to get out, but similar to the character that was in the Shawshank Redemption. Oh, right, yeah, You're never going to get out. Yeah, my cousins say, "Well, life was better for me in prison. I don't have to pay bills. I have a skill there. My friends are there. I'm going back." And that just really frightens me about prisons, especially when they're rebuilding them and they're remodeling them. Private companies are running them. Yeah. To see that as a better option than the outside, to me, is frightening. Yeah. That's a good point. And I don't know what that's going to mean for the future. So, those are the things that concern me. Got you. So, Rising Down is widely believed to be your most overtly political record so far. Mm-hmm. Do you think Hurricane Katrina was a turning point for [Roots' emcee] Black Thought in terms of his lyrical perspective on things or just in general as a group? Not to say that the previous six years were going very well or anything. Well, hip-hop is just an extremely limiting genre. It doesn't allow people to blossom as human beings. It really doesn't allow people to even show a 360 view of themselves. Right. You rarely see three-dimensional characters in hip-hop. That's a good point--very rarely. So, it's sort of a thin line. I've read reviews of Rising Down, in which journalists have just dismissed us as being "Debbie Downers" or that type of thing. I'm sorry if I'm not concerned with the superman dance right now, but four of the policemen that just killed Sean Bell just got acquitted. Yeah, I saw that this morning. No one going to talk about this? Right. I can't wait to [get to] the point in which we're allowed to address any subject that comes to mind without being in question or seeming pretentious or whatever. Right. Yeah, I mean, at this point, if you're not a Debbie Downer, you're not paying attention. I understand their point of view, too. Life is bad already; why do you got to remind me of how bad life is? I understand that. But hip-hop is getting to the point where we're only good for the party. Right. That's a great point, man. If Springsteen has s*** to say, I got s*** to say, too. Absolutely. Gamble and Huff getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last month got me thinking a little bit about the scene that they developed, the sound that they developed over years.

And I know that Okayplayer artists are still churning out good records, but some of that momentum that you guys had from the Soulquarians in the late '90s or early 2000s has gone away, or at least people are doing their own thing a little more individually. Why did that take place, would you say? Is it just people wanting their own identity? They don't want to be associated too much with a collective? Well, all that took place the second we took that Vibe photo. Yeah. That was officially the end of it, which is really sad because the four hours that it took to take that Vibe photo was the most beautiful day and the worst day as well. It just goes to show you that throughout history, you've seen that happen before. Some people could say that Art Kane's "A Great Day in Harlem" photo was like, "That's one of the best days ever in the history of jazz." But I've heard jazz luminaries say that that pretty much marked the end of an era. Oh, right. OK. And I was like, "Wow." You know, the '50s were a great time for jazz music. All those cats--if you read all their autobiographies and interviews--they were like, "Nah, the 1940s was the best year for it. And then, once Wall Street got a hold of us, the movement ended." Right. Yeah. And then, you could look at the Monterey Pop Festival and Woodstock as the beginning of a movement. But history tells us that they were the very end of the movement. Saturday Night Fever and the arrival of disco. And then disco is dead. And I can give you history throughout music in which what seems like the beginning of a movement is actually the end of it. The iconic moment is actually the end of it. Yeah. It's a good point. It's kind of like Bruce Willis not knowing that he was dead in The Sixth Sense. Right. [Laughs] And in that situation, everybody showed up on time, and it was just the 11 of us in the room at the same time. We were talking. And it was beautiful. And then the next thing I knew the article comes out, and this one's arguing, "Well, I want to do my own thing. Why does it look like I'm under you guys, and dah-dah-dah-dah?" Right. And here's the sad s***. What none of them truly understood is that no individual artist had ever had any type of success on their own terms, alone. Unless they're a one-hit wonder. Without some help. I mean it's not like you can associate Tiny Tim to a movement like that. But I mean, basically, throughout history ... A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Jungle Brothers, Queen Latifah, Monie Love. That was a movement. Yeah. Dr. Dre, Snoop, anything with synthesizers, Warren G, that's the West Coast sound. That's gangsta rap. The Hyphy movement for San Francisco, successful or not successful. You have to contextualize any music that you hear as being associated with something else. And you can't do things on your own.

We knew that. We knew that back in '94/'95 when we first started. It was like, "Our music is not going to make sense to anybody unless we have it contextualized to a place where you can associate us with certain people."

And we knew that it was going to take five years to do. We even went to the point where we had to go to our label and say, "Look, you're just going to release this record as a wasted effort if you don't build a movement. You just can't promote The Roots. You've got to build a movement." And we told them exactly what to do. Yeah. Bring in more people. We told them, "Go to Relativity, get Common off his contract. Buy him out of the contract. Go and get the entire Rawkus roster." That's what they did. They took Mos [Def]. They took [Talib] Kweli. They even took Kool G Rap.

Eventually, they finally took the entire Rawkus roster. But we had to stand over their shoulders and be like, "Look, sign this, that, and the other person. Let's build a movement. A lot of the things that we did between '98 and 2004 were because we were actually funded to build a movement. And that's when you started to see the blossoming of us making sense. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. That context. Now a lot of it has to do with indifference. There's a lot of pressure. A lot of the records that were released from that time period were staples, and history. And then there's the pressure of, "Well, I got to follow it up again. I got to follow it up again." So, there's a self-saboteur thing going on. There's the psychosomatic thing going on. There's the political pressure of being a leader in a harsh political climate, turning 30, there's turning 40. [Laughs] Yeah. I think we'll get it back together. The leader of that movement, D'Angelo--he's in the Bay Area right now. Oh, is he? Yeah, he's been there for about three months working with Raphael [Saadiq] writing songs. Oh, cool. OK. That's good news. Yes, absolutely. That's really good news. Yeah. So it's coming back together. But I definitely had no idea that I could release five records from the last time those guys released one record. Yeah, that's crazy. It's been a long time for a lot of people. Yes. Yeah. I caught both the Kanye West show and then also the Jay-Z and Mary J. Blige shows here in the Bay Area last week or earlier this week. Both had really powerful bands behind them, even though Kanye kept his down underneath the stage in the orchestra pit. [Laughs] They call me every night. [Laughs] Do they? [Laughs] [Laughs] They call me every night on IM. Do they really? Yeah. [Laughs] I will say this much. For Jay-Z's band, for N*E*R*D's band, for Kanye's band--yeah, I'm brushing my shoulders off on that one. [Laughs] OK. A lot of people are like, "Oh, your show is so incredible now." And I'm like, "Mm, I wonder why." Yeah. That was my question. Do you think we'd be seeing so many big hip-hop stars traveling with full bands--many of whom are from Philly--if The Roots hadn't been doing their thing for such a long time? It's funny. Me and Kanye have the same road manager. OK. And he was like, "Yo, man, N*E*R*D is kicking a** every night. Man, we got to come with it." Yeah, they were good. So I went online, and I'm looking. I'm like, "[What] the hell?" I said, "Dude. You want to know why they're kicking a** every night? Those are our guys!" Yeah. We built that band. I totally forgot. I thought [Pharrel Williams] was still sticking with Spymob. Yeah. People often ask, "Is it strictly Philadelphia?" No, it's nothing to do with anything in the water. It has nothing to do with it. At the end of the day, during that period that I told you about, when we went to the label and told them build up the movement, one of the things was that musicianship, especially black musicianship, was really just limited to the church. That's why you hear most black bands play in that sort of gospelized, overplaying Arsenio Hall band sound. [Laughs] Right. They have absolutely no ounce of soul whatsoever. And it's like 12 keyboards, a drummer that overplays. So we sponsored a jam night called Black Lily. Yeah, for sure. For six, seven years. As a result, that brought every musician to tri-state area. Now half of Jay-Z's band is from Philly. All those cats from Jay-Z's crew, from Kanye's crew, from N*E*R*D's crew, 80 percent of them came through that Black Lily channel. Right. When you socialize, and when you meet other musicians, you practice more than just that once a week for church. When you do that every day, and you have a place to do it, of course, the musicianship level is going to go bananas. Absolutely, yeah. That's why I'm telling them about building a movement. Yeah. We have to talk about the Al Green record. All I can say is that you done did it with this one. Was there a moment in working on this record that you realized that you had nailed that classic Al Green sound? [Laughs] I'll tell you this much. You'll probably be the first guy that I'll level with. OK. I could actually have gone deeper into it, but it's weird, man, because you got Al on one hand who says he doesn't want to revisit the past. And then you got the record label that doesn't want to alienate their Starbucks audience. Right. Sure. And then you got me with my whole agenda, which is like, "I don't care what none of you say. I'm going to do what I want to do." Right. [Laughs] So, it was interesting. It took three years. Yeah, it was a long time. It was probably the hardest landmine of music I've ever had to participate in. And I participated in some heavy hard-to-do records. I've never just been in a situation in which one side is telling me that two and two is four, and then the other side tells me that six minus two is four. And we all want to reach the same destination. Right. But we're all going about it the roundabout way. A lot of it was just a lot of psychology. On Al's end, we did some things in which we had to play and jam a little longer so that he could write lyrics on the spot, because he wouldn't want to come back to a song after we did it. Some of the songs had gaps in them. The reason why opening track "Lay It Down" starts the record is that was essentially day one of recording. And that song's, like, 80 percent freestyle. Yeah, that's awesome. He was that confident. He said, "Just play the music. I'm just singing from my heart." And that's why you hear a lot of him just laughing and just beside himself, because that's really coming from his soul.

On the other hand, I figured out a way that we could somehow get a raw result but still have it make sense and not just a song full of sha-la-la-la-la-la-la. And I will say that the [Amy] Winehouse record really gave me some leeway for the label to sort of get off my case. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Because they didn't want the record to sound old at all. If I had given them an album like Jill Scott's Is It The Way--that neo soul sound--then I'm certain that they would have been happy, because you could sell that to the Starbucks audience. But this gut bucket Memphis soul that I'm trying to give them, they didn't quite get that. And it wasn't till the Winehouse record. That they got it. I'm sure that was a convincing record for a lot of people. Well, now the phone's ringing off the hook. I'm sure. So, let the games begin. That brings me to my last question. I would imagine that the phone's ringing off the hook now even more than ever. So, what else are you working on in terms of production in the next year or so? I know you were doing the Corinne Bailey Rae record, but I'd guess that that's probably on pause for a while with the passing of her husband. But what else are you working on? We actually did her four songs a week before that unfortunate incident happened. I know that we're going to go back to work soon, but maybe she needs time off to just mourn and get it together.

And from the Al record, Tom Jones has been calling us. OK. Cool. And Al Jarreau. Al Jarreau's been calling. That'd be fun. Oh, definitely. If they're over 60 and I could sample them in the '70s, I'm with it. This is probably the first time I worked with someone and had no clue with whom I was working, just because of the strenuous nature of our schedule. But I had no clue that Duffy was as big an artist as she was in Europe. Oh, yeah, she's huge. I had no clue. So, we did this "Mercy" remix. Oh, cool. That probably sounds older than the Al Green material. And the results were so good that they actually wanted to ask us about doing our next record. Awesome, man. That's fantastic. She's a fantastic singer. I hope so. [Laughs] I'll do my research. I just went in the studio and just went with my heart, not knowing who I was doing it for or whatever, but, yeah. Yeah. Well, right on. That's a pretty full plate, man. It is. I wish you nothing but luck with the record, with the tour, and everything else, man. I really appreciate the time. Thank you very much, man.