"Do I truly feel like hip-hop is dead? No, I don't," Questlove tells NPR."However, I do believe that the landscape and the rules have changed. And some of its participants don't know it."blurts out, before I can ask the first question, with a laugh that confirms he’s being eaten alive online.
I realized, maybe 10 years ago, that my 40s were creeping up on me — that one day, I'm going to be the adult in the room. And there's really nothing glamorous about that path. There's nothing sexy about it.And just in general. In the last 15 years, I've been the guy that's always on the sideline like, “Who's going to be the person to make the change?” And the universe always points to me like,.
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 likeSo much of the book is you admittedly playing catch up to each era of hip-hop innovation. First, you kinda cram to understand it, then you finally accept it, and eventually you grow to appreciate it. But there's always something at your core that you're resisting.
I believe above anything, when I leave this earth and you’ve gotta figure out what to put on my byline, I call myself a creative. And sometimes you have to leave something to appreciate it. Whenpassed away, I didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but hip-hop really wasn't the same for me after he left. I started to take interest in other things that still kept me creative.
Right, you know what I'm saying? It seems like there's this perpetual battle. I don't know if it's the man in the mirror that cats are battling, or … came out, we were having a conversation about where he was creatively and what motivates him and all that stuff. He’d said something to the tune of, he's only motivated when someone doubts him.
And this is not to say that we were inactive: We were actively making an album, since 2015. Ideas always come when you are not actively doing music for a long time. When I was working on the movie and working on a book and working elsewhere, suddenly you start getting these ideas again. You're trying to ignore it — like I had to concentrate on just writing this book or scoring this film or whatever.
It's the goal for me, personally. Especially having spent two years doing this Sly Stone . Without giving too much of it away, it's less about Sly Stone's life than about trying to answer the question, why do we self-sabotage?When I started this project, I asked my mother, what do you think happened to Sly Stone? And everyone's take is always the same, which is what incenses me about Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” campaign.