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I saw this as a seat at the table moment. Here's the thing: For us to walk through life — and by us, I mean Black people — it's a constant journey of living in fight or flight. There's never a period where you actually feel safe, or I can drop my guard for half a second. That said, you often have choices to make. And for a lot of us, especially in Generation X, you kind of walk through things knowing that you're going to have to be part of the long-game journey.
When did you realize that what you said maybe was not quite being received in the way that you intended? And this is not to say that quality has gone down. Look, of course I don't think hip-hop is dead. If an MC likeWhen something is jarring and rubs me the wrong way or doesn't make sense, then I'm smart enough to know this is the next phase of what's happening, creatively.
It feels like you've spent a lot of your life wincing when hip-hop refused to take the high road. When it's evolved in ways that you saw as regressive, has it ever made you question your place in it? Of the beef, overall? I think what you're describing right now sounds like what a lot of rappers are driven by — even when they're not beefing. Think about how many artists’ songs you hear where they’re obviously speaking to some unknown, anonymous nemesis.
One of the prime reasons activity stopped in terms of an actual Roots product was the transitioning, the death, of our manager/producer — the adult in the room — which was, the gentleman that's been the Billy Preston/George Martin to our Beatles for our entire career. When he died of leukemia in 2014, that kind of put Tariq and I in a position. We’d always been used to being in the back seat while he drove.
The way that I felt about hip-hop in ‘88, when every week a new album was changing your life, I don't feel that way now. But I definitely know that there's people that have that same passion as I did. Some of the people that I’ve tested this theory on say, “More than Black people go through this. I go through this every day.” But you don't have the generational obligation to save everyone. If you're given a winning lottery ticket to save yourself, and you cansave yourself, you will be miserable — because you're instantly going to think about, you know, there's a community. There’s a relationship we have where I we, and your success is my success.
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