Speaker 1: Pushkin. Let's just talk easy. I'm Samforcoso. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: show today. I'm joined by the one and only Quest Love.
Speaker 1: Quest Love is the drummer and bandleader for The Roots,
Speaker 1: the music director for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon,
Speaker 1: the author of many many books, including Momenta Blues and
Speaker 1: Music Is History. He's produced recordings for DeAngelo, Ericabadou, Elvis Costello,
Speaker 1: the late Amy Winehouse. He's also the host of his
Speaker 1: own podcast, Questlove Supreme. I'm not joking when I say
Speaker 1: I'm actually leaving out like seven other jobs this man does.
Speaker 1: I don't know how he does it, or how he
Speaker 1: found the time to sit with us, but I'm glad
Speaker 1: to have him here today now. His recent endeavor is
Speaker 1: directing a documentary called Summer of Soul. Maybe you've seen it.
Speaker 1: It came out last summer. It's available now on Hulu
Speaker 1: and it's poised to receive an OSCAR nomination later this week.
Speaker 1: Part concert film, part historical record, the documentary is set
Speaker 1: across six weeks in the summer of nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: where just one hundred miles south of Woodstock, the Harlem
Speaker 1: Cultural Festival was filmed in Mount Morris Park. The festival
Speaker 1: featured performances from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, King, The Fifth Dimension,
Speaker 1: Gladys Knight and The Pips. But for years the footage
Speaker 1: from this landmark event was completely buried, shelved, destined to
Speaker 1: never see the light of day. What it needed was
Speaker 1: not just a director, but a student of music, and
Speaker 1: that is where Questlove comes in. Here's a clip from
Speaker 1: his directorial debut, Summer of Saul. Nobody ever heard of
Speaker 1: called festival. Nobody would believe it happened. Six weekends of
Speaker 1: major artists, the Panthers, what a security and kids were
Speaker 1: sitting up in a dream. I was nervous. I didn't
Speaker 1: expect a crowd like that. Something very important was happening.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just about the music. Nineteen sixty nine, with
Speaker 1: a change of Europe in the black community, she dials
Speaker 1: were changing, music was changing, and revolution was coming together.
Speaker 1: We all ain't we ain't people. That concert took my
Speaker 1: life from black and white into color. We wanted progress.
Speaker 1: We are black people and we should be proud of this.
Speaker 1: We were coming together to say this was our world
Speaker 1: and how beautiful it was. I'm gonna try to sing
Speaker 1: a song together. Don't wait for your neighbor, because your
Speaker 1: neighbor might be waiting for high. We believed in what
Speaker 1: we felt in here, so when we went off, let's go,
Speaker 1: let's go do it. That was a clip from Summer
Speaker 1: of Soul. If you haven't seen the film, it's available
Speaker 1: to stream on Hulu. I really can't recommend it highly enough.
Speaker 1: It is a stunning, moving portrait of this seismic event,
Speaker 1: an event that very well could have been lost to
Speaker 1: the annals of history if not for Quesslov. But in
Speaker 1: many ways, he was kind of born to make this film,
Speaker 1: as he himself was born into music history. Both of
Speaker 1: his parents were musicians, his father the lead singer for
Speaker 1: the famous fifties doo wop band Lee Andrew and the Hearts,
Speaker 1: and even though Quesslov grew up in West Philadelphia in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, his childhood was mostly spent on the road,
Speaker 1: as the family performed in Atlantic City, the Poconos, Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: taking shelter in airport sheratons, spending summer vacations in hotel
Speaker 1: swimming pools. This unusual upbringing prepared him for the life
Speaker 1: of a traveling musician, but His obsession with music history,
Speaker 1: which developed throughout his childhood, is what brought him the
Speaker 1: Summer of Soul, and it's here that we begin with Questlove.
Speaker 1: He's fond of referring to himself as a walking Black
Speaker 1: son Ian, which is a funnier way of describing what
Speaker 1: he's become in twenty twenty two. An archivist, an artist,
Speaker 1: and a storyteller whose mission is to preserve and restore
Speaker 1: the history of black music, to recover the past for
Speaker 1: the future. So with that, here is Questlove. How's it
Speaker 1: going to do a quick sound test? What did you
Speaker 1: have for breakfast? One? Two, three four? I'm sorry most
Speaker 1: people just tell me A B C, D E F G.
Speaker 1: I have my breakfast yet h I j K L
Speaker 1: M N O P. Nice to meet you, by the way,
Speaker 1: I to meet you. How do you feel? I feel great.
Speaker 1: I wake up every day with gratitude, which is something
Speaker 1: new for me. But you know, life is different post pandemic,
Speaker 1: Like I swear the many changes that this film is
Speaker 1: brought to me, just from a human standpoint, all the
Speaker 1: things that I used to eye roll and scoff at
Speaker 1: and laugh at behind people's backs, I totally turn into
Speaker 1: that person. I used to always look at Diddy like, oh, really,
Speaker 1: you start every day on your knees thanking God for
Speaker 1: another day. Really, like you get up from your your
Speaker 1: escapades from the night before and you just thank God
Speaker 1: for everything you know. And I feel like that's the
Speaker 1: main difference of my life now. And then, like before
Speaker 1: my feet touched the ground, I make myself, you know,
Speaker 1: recite twenty things that I'm grateful for, even if it's
Speaker 1: just the cat's not waking me up to feed them
Speaker 1: at four in the morning. You got to start your
Speaker 1: day off with twenty great affirmations before you even check
Speaker 1: your email and get into the world. I assume you're
Speaker 1: also grateful for this movie that has happened. Yes, in
Speaker 1: the process of this movie, you have recovered this remarkable
Speaker 1: historical footage from the Harlem Cultural Festival of nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: It's a movie born out of this passage. I think
Speaker 1: from your book Music is History, in that you write,
Speaker 1: I have thought often about how history happens twice, once
Speaker 1: when an event actually occurs, and once when people discover
Speaker 1: that it has occurred. That second time is the first
Speaker 1: time for them because they didn't know about it the
Speaker 1: first time. Exactly going in the summer of Seoul. I
Speaker 1: think it's safe to say most viewers were discovering this
Speaker 1: event for the first time. But for you, I have
Speaker 1: two questions, what was your entry point into this story?
Speaker 1: And did this framework from your book that history happens twice?
Speaker 1: Did it help clarify your purpose for making this movie.
Speaker 1: This is one of the rare examples where history might
Speaker 1: happen three times. The first time I'd laid eyes on
Speaker 1: this project, I was far away. I was in Tokyo, Japan,
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety seven. My translator had taken me to a
Speaker 1: restaurant called the Soul Tring Cafe, which is basically an
Speaker 1: olive garden with a bunch of TV monitors on the
Speaker 1: screens showing old concert footage of motown acts, you know,
Speaker 1: the Temptations and Smokey Robinson whatnot. Near my table, there
Speaker 1: was a monitor that showed Sly the family Stone performing
Speaker 1: in front of a large audience. It was camera too,
Speaker 1: like the bird's eye camera, so I couldn't see the faces.
Speaker 1: I didn't even realize those were black people they were
Speaker 1: performing in front of. Having saw the word festival behind them,
Speaker 1: I assume that okay, this must be Montro Jazz Festival,
Speaker 1: or this could be the Nice Jazz Festival Glastonbury. Like
Speaker 1: I thought it was European because as far as I knew,
Speaker 1: festivals were not an American thing. There was Woodstock, there
Speaker 1: was Altamont. You know, after Altamont and no more festivals,
Speaker 1: there's live aid farm made, and all we had now
Speaker 1: was Lollapalooza. So in nineteen ninety seven, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'm watching. I'm just seeing on the family Stone
Speaker 1: perform from like a camera that's far away. So cut
Speaker 1: to twenty years later, in twenty seventeen, backstage at the
Speaker 1: Tonight Show. Or are these two gentlemen, David Dinnerstein Robert
Speaker 1: Phivolin are trying to convince me that three hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Harlemites gathered over the summer of nineteen sixty nine to
Speaker 1: watch Sly and Stevie, Mavis Staples and the Staples Singers
Speaker 1: and BB King and all these acts. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: taking my iPhone and running to the next dressing room
Speaker 1: in googling, and I don't see anything, and I'm asking
Speaker 1: my assistant and I'm like, yo, there's nothing here. What
Speaker 1: are they talking about? And I'm like, excuse you, guys,
Speaker 1: can you wait one second, I'm running over. I'm calling
Speaker 1: up people. Yo, you were in New York at the
Speaker 1: time of six year Yo? You ever heard of this
Speaker 1: black woodstock thing? Right? Exactly. I would have almost put
Speaker 1: the farm on the fact that I was either being
Speaker 1: pranked or lied to, because there's certain people that I
Speaker 1: meet that know my reputation for collecting pop culture artifacts,
Speaker 1: and there's always that one guy that wants to let
Speaker 1: me know that he as a particular Jackson's concert from
Speaker 1: like nineteen eighty in Oakland that I don't got, or
Speaker 1: I bet you don't got this print stems of let's
Speaker 1: go crazy demo. There's always that person that's trying to
Speaker 1: outdo me, and so I naturally thought that these guys
Speaker 1: were trying to one up me, like, we know you're
Speaker 1: the king of pop culture, but we bet you don't
Speaker 1: got this. You know, I'm kind of dismissive, and I
Speaker 1: walk away from it like Okay, well we'll do lunch,
Speaker 1: let's see you. And they come back the next week
Speaker 1: with a hard drive and forty hours of footage on it.
Speaker 1: And then all that confidence and swagger I had just
Speaker 1: totally went out the window. I realized, like, oh god,
Speaker 1: this really happened. Even as I'm watching it, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for excuses like, well, there's obviously a good reason why
Speaker 1: this never came out, like maybe the sound sucks, or
Speaker 1: maybe the tape qualities bad or and there was nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with it. The whole time. I was just like, wait, one,
Speaker 1: why me? Two why didn't this come out? And three
Speaker 1: why me? That's my introduction to the project. Then once
Speaker 1: it comes out, it's almost like I've rediscovered again. So
Speaker 1: that's why I say it almost history almost happens three
Speaker 1: times for me, or four times. This happened. When this
Speaker 1: happened two years before I was born. This came into
Speaker 1: my life in nineteen ninety seven, unbeknownst to me. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, I try to deny it even existent. And
Speaker 1: now this has absolutely changed my life as a human being.
Speaker 1: There's a point in Prince's autobiography where he says that
Speaker 1: seeing Woodstock at eleven changed his life, and he knew
Speaker 1: that's what he wanted to do this film. In watching
Speaker 1: Tony Lawrence step out on faith and attempt to heal
Speaker 1: the Harlem community with music and art, spoke a lot
Speaker 1: to me even as I was editing it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not even the same from that standpoint, Like I
Speaker 1: now realized that I have to conquer all fears and
Speaker 1: never have doubt in any creative project I get into.
Speaker 1: Tony Lawrence goes on stage and introduces these acts, and
Speaker 1: these acts include Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Fifth Dimensions, Lie
Speaker 1: in the Family Stone, Gladys Knight, all of whom have
Speaker 1: agreed to come to Mount Morris Park in Harlem. And
Speaker 1: you have these remarkable performances that you've assembled on the
Speaker 1: soundtrack of the film, which I know just came out
Speaker 1: on the liner notes of that soundtrack you wrote. What
Speaker 1: you're hearing here is a certain specific quality the sound
Speaker 1: of warmth, and the sound of warmth is a sound
Speaker 1: of human beings making music, and the sound of humanity
Speaker 1: isn't something you should take lightly. What does that warmth
Speaker 1: mean and sound like to you? Well, for stars, let
Speaker 1: me say that when Hal Tolsion, the director of the
Speaker 1: Harlem Cultural Festival, the guy that's directing the cameras well,
Speaker 1: he signs over the rights to the footage to us
Speaker 1: when he passes away, maybe like a day or two later,
Speaker 1: his wife reaches out to us. She just says, you know,
Speaker 1: just happenstance, Like, by the way, guys, there's stuff in
Speaker 1: my basement. I don't know if it might mean anything
Speaker 1: to you, but you know, we're about to move and
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you guys want to take a look
Speaker 1: at see if this stuff. Is it any interest to
Speaker 1: you or I don't know. And man, we look at
Speaker 1: this footage and it's like we see these boxes and
Speaker 1: these boxes answer everything. And the first thing that catches
Speaker 1: my eye is that the soundboard only has fifteen microphones. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm a very technical person when it comes to engineering
Speaker 1: and all those things, so I'm looking for like outboard gear.
Speaker 1: Was there such a thing as outboard gear? And you know,
Speaker 1: like things that we use now to make our performances.
Speaker 1: Happened And the first thing I did was I called
Speaker 1: my engineer for the Roots and I'm said, you know,
Speaker 1: just out of curiosity, I'm looking at there's only fifteen
Speaker 1: channels here. How many channels do the Roots use in concert?
Speaker 1: He said, Well, back in the day, like you guys
Speaker 1: are like maybe forty six channels? Is it now? Average
Speaker 1: shows it's just like one hundred and three. I said
Speaker 1: what I said, how And I showed him footage as
Speaker 1: I could explain to me how to fifteen microphones, three
Speaker 1: of which aren't even used only on one song. Stevie
Speaker 1: Wonder his drummer uses three microphones. Stevie's drum set is
Speaker 1: three microphones, but that's just one song. Stevie's keyboard gets
Speaker 1: one microphone. Stevie's guitar and bass player get one microphone
Speaker 1: to share with each other. Stevie's vocal with the keyboards
Speaker 1: one microphone, Stevie's vocals when he's standing up one microphone.
Speaker 1: Stevie's horn section share the remaining six microphones. I think,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, how is this sounding so pristine and
Speaker 1: better than anything in life? And yet you know, we're
Speaker 1: using one hundred and three channels and we're not even
Speaker 1: reaching half of this warmth. And there's a lot of
Speaker 1: lessons that I learned about we use like technology is awesome.
Speaker 1: And the thing is is that evolution and change are
Speaker 1: important aspects of this film. You know, sixty nine is
Speaker 1: the year where fashion change, where hairstyles change, what we
Speaker 1: called ourselves like, we started calling ourselves black in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, so politically, we're changing. Culturally, everything is changing.
Speaker 1: So it's not like I'm saying like I'm anti technology,
Speaker 1: but I think there's also a point where in our
Speaker 1: search for perfection, you can squeeze the life out of something.
Speaker 1: So when I'm watching these tapes, especially if you look
Speaker 1: at mebe King's wise seeing the blues, there's a point
Speaker 1: of magic where like in the last minute, there's like
Speaker 1: a breathless race to the finish. But I noticed something
Speaker 1: about the musicianship on that particular performance. Oftentimes musicians feel
Speaker 1: like they have to play loud in order to make
Speaker 1: an impact. You don't have to hit the drums that
Speaker 1: loud to make an impact. And as a result, because
Speaker 1: all the musicians are playing very soft, it's a different
Speaker 1: sound quality when it goes to the microphones where you
Speaker 1: don't have to eat q as much. And as a result,
Speaker 1: when we finally did the final mix for the movie,
Speaker 1: we truthfully only like we use the rough mixes from
Speaker 1: that performance. And it's not like the sound guide knew, Okay,
Speaker 1: one day in the future, fifty years from now, this
Speaker 1: is going to be a movie, so let me make
Speaker 1: sure this is pristine quality. No, it was just like
Speaker 1: he turned the microphone levels and then just made a
Speaker 1: reference mix. But that reference mix is more perfect sounding
Speaker 1: than any equeuing or effects we could have put on it.
Speaker 1: And we try to mix this thing and it's like
Speaker 1: something's not quite right. I think I like the rough
Speaker 1: mix better, and that's what we wound up using. Like,
Speaker 1: it's just the sound of warmth. It's an indescribable natural
Speaker 1: sound that we take for granted now, but explains a lot.
Speaker 1: Explains why rappers tend to sample from things in the sixties, seventies,
Speaker 1: and eighties. There's a warmth there that we can't quite
Speaker 1: describe that's been taken away. We can create faster on
Speaker 1: our computers, but there's nothing that's going to replace the
Speaker 1: sound of analog warmth. Well, instead of trying to describe it,
Speaker 1: why don't we take a listen to that warmth you're
Speaker 1: talking about. This is a clip from Summer of Soul
Speaker 1: from the nineteen sixty nine Harlem Cultural Festival. Now, ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, we're going to bring up some folks glad
Speaker 1: as night with somebother girl. You do it been bold
Speaker 1: heard anymore? It took me by surprise, I would say,
Speaker 1: when I found out don't you do that I heard
Speaker 1: him do the bay being, not that I heard him, Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: oh yes. From your book, you have this line I
Speaker 1: really like you write. It is true that how you
Speaker 1: come to history has everything to do with how history
Speaker 1: comes to you. And I think to understand how you
Speaker 1: came to the history in this film, we have to
Speaker 1: understand how musical history came to you growing up in
Speaker 1: West Philadelphia. You're born in nineteen seventy one to Lee
Speaker 1: Andrews and Jaqueline Thompson, both of whom we're singers. But
Speaker 1: your first musical memory, I think it's a tragedy, comes
Speaker 1: at the age of two or three, when your sister
Speaker 1: washes soap into your eyes. Yeah, it's weird. Music to
Speaker 1: me is a polaroid. This often explains why, hopefully no
Speaker 1: one will ever have this experience, But if you ever
Speaker 1: have the unfortunate situation of getting pulled over, you turn
Speaker 1: the volume down. Chappelle jokes that you know, no one
Speaker 1: wants to get their ass beat to a soundtrack. But
Speaker 1: I find it weird that a lot of the traumatic
Speaker 1: memories of my life are the memories that have stuck
Speaker 1: with me. Why do you find that weird? Well, it's
Speaker 1: further accentuated by the fact that there is always something
Speaker 1: playing in the background that sets it off. And so
Speaker 1: the first two memories in life that I have are
Speaker 1: also two tragic memories. One is getting my afro washed.
Speaker 1: And you know, I guess at the time I was
Speaker 1: two years old, I didn't realize that you have to
Speaker 1: your eyes when the soap hits your face or else
Speaker 1: it's going to sting. The soap gets to my eyes
Speaker 1: and it stings, and my only memory is my family
Speaker 1: pinning my shoulders to the floor like a wrestler so
Speaker 1: that I can flush my eye out. And again I
Speaker 1: can't speak words or whatever, but I definitely remember laying
Speaker 1: on the floor and they're pouring water into my eyes
Speaker 1: and I'm like crying, and all I remember was slying
Speaker 1: the family stones just like a baby playing in the background,
Speaker 1: which just like one of the many sad, depressing songs
Speaker 1: on there's a riot going on. And so even to
Speaker 1: this day, I just think of soap stinging, crying, my dad,
Speaker 1: my sister pinning my shoulders to the ground, my mom
Speaker 1: pouring water into my face. And the second one, of course,
Speaker 1: when I'm in Pasadena, California, My first memory of Soul
Speaker 1: Train also tied into my first memory or Curtis Mayfield.
Speaker 1: I'm taking a bath and I run out of the bathtub.
Speaker 1: It's always in a bath. Yeah, I'm clean. I'm running
Speaker 1: in the living room of my my grandmother's house and
Speaker 1: I slip and my leg lands on like those old
Speaker 1: school radiators, and I guess I had second degree burns.
Speaker 1: I had a mark on my leg, probably up into
Speaker 1: the age of sixteen. But at the exact moment when
Speaker 1: that burn happens is when Curtis Mayfield's song modulates to
Speaker 1: another key. And for some reason, even to this day,
Speaker 1: when a song modulates, like if you listen to the
Speaker 1: end of Stevie Wonders a Golden Lady, how it keeps
Speaker 1: going up higher and higher and higher and key. When
Speaker 1: I hear a modulation that's almost like a foreshadowing, or
Speaker 1: like omen in a movie, like Don't Don't Go in
Speaker 1: that Closet, I mean, it could be like My Favorite
Speaker 1: Things by Julie Andrews or whatever. When a song changes
Speaker 1: a key, it instantly triggers a fear that I can't escape.
Speaker 1: To this day, I know it's weird to say, but yeah,
Speaker 1: That's kind of how music is our polemoids. There are
Speaker 1: photos of your past, and your memories are what ape you.
Speaker 1: There is something about Golden Lady that makes me want
Speaker 1: to switch it before. That happens every time, and I
Speaker 1: have never I don't have the trauma attached to that
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, but I get nervous, and I
Speaker 1: don't know why. You know it's weird. I actually want
Speaker 1: unknowingly repurpose it and rechanneled it into a comic memory.
Speaker 1: We were having a jam session once in Philly and
Speaker 1: music Soul Child was playing with us, and so we're
Speaker 1: playing a song and he's singing it and we get
Speaker 1: to the end, and then we switch the key. We
Speaker 1: go a little higher, half to step up. He's with it.
Speaker 1: We go half to step up, he's with it. He's
Speaker 1: half a step up. He's with it. Now I'm looking
Speaker 1: at my keyboard player like, wait, do we end it here?
Speaker 1: Do we go up another key? All right, we'll go
Speaker 1: up another key. He goes up a key, we half
Speaker 1: to step up, and then music sort of looking at
Speaker 1: us like okay, like we get into song right here
Speaker 1: because I can't sing this high. And I was like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're good. And I look at James like, you won't
Speaker 1: go another half? Okay, let's go. We go half step
Speaker 1: up and music looking at you know, we're in front
Speaker 1: of an audience, you know what I mean. Like, so
Speaker 1: he instantly programs himself and then we did it again.
Speaker 1: He's looking at us like, stop moduling, like we're good,
Speaker 1: We're good. I said, are you good? You're good? I
Speaker 1: was like, one more time, Jason, and then he just
Speaker 1: looks at his Stones and Michael and Stacey like he
Speaker 1: realizes that we're laughing at him. So, you know, somehow
Speaker 1: I rechanneled it as a comic moment now, so I
Speaker 1: tend to now think of music soul child struggling to
Speaker 1: hit those side notes as we keep raising the key up. Now,
Speaker 1: you're talking about a live performance that comes many years
Speaker 1: later after your childhood, and although you grew up in
Speaker 1: West Philadelphia, you end up spending a lot of time
Speaker 1: on the road as a kid part of your father's band,
Speaker 1: Lee Andrews and the Hearts. At age seven, you steamed
Speaker 1: and ironed the costumes. At age nine, you operated the spotlights.
Speaker 1: At twelve, you were actually in the band. When you
Speaker 1: look back at some of those live musical experience, but
Speaker 1: really that polaroid as a whole. What do you make
Speaker 1: of those sort of unusual childhood memories. Well, the first
Speaker 1: thing I say is, maam, my dad really got off
Speaker 1: good on cheap labor. Like, wait, it tends to be bicycles.
Speaker 1: I'll have to pay in order to get a band
Speaker 1: leader and a musical director. You should have unionized. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. You know, it's weird. It's so funny
Speaker 1: because I just talked to my mom about this maybe
Speaker 1: a week and a half ago, like during Christmas week,
Speaker 1: we were looking at old photos. I got into conversation
Speaker 1: on what made her decide to send me to performing
Speaker 1: art school in the first grade. She's like, man, you know,
Speaker 1: and I know you wouldn't have been able to survive
Speaker 1: in a normal public school. And I was like, well,
Speaker 1: what do you mean? And she brought up the story
Speaker 1: to me about it was one time when we came home,
Speaker 1: I was explaining to my friends on the block. I
Speaker 1: think I was trying to tell them the difference between
Speaker 1: what the meals are like when you sit in first
Speaker 1: class versus when you sit and coach. Now, this is
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy nine, you're eight years old. Yeah, and they're like,
Speaker 1: hell are you talking about I was like, well, you
Speaker 1: know they have like Warker sandwiches and da da da da.
Speaker 1: My mom caught the moment. She intuitively like told me
Speaker 1: to come in the house, like try to stop the
Speaker 1: mirrors having a snob movement right now. Well, I didn't know.
Speaker 1: I just literally thought every kid has that experience where
Speaker 1: they sit and watch their parents perfore him in a
Speaker 1: Miami nightclub, and they know what I'm talking about when
Speaker 1: I'm talking about cutting light jails, and they know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about when I say ringing out the monitors.
Speaker 1: Like I realized I didn't have like normal childhood experiences.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this at the time, So you know,
Speaker 1: for me, I think just that period between seven and
Speaker 1: really sixteen, I tore this was just a normal everyday
Speaker 1: existence for everyone in life. And then as I became
Speaker 1: a teenager, I realized like how unusual and how charmed
Speaker 1: my life was. I tell a story of when I'm
Speaker 1: signed homework at Performing Arts. My very first homework assignment
Speaker 1: was bringing your favorite record, your favorite forty five. I
Speaker 1: brought in Frankie Lyman's and the teenagers why do fools
Speaker 1: fall in love? I think my teacher found that hilarious
Speaker 1: sort of like if kids are the roots now, will
Speaker 1: tell me how much they love Michael Jackson, Like, I'll
Speaker 1: be shocked, you know what, Michael jack Like, you're not
Speaker 1: talking about like a Corday or a little naz X
Speaker 1: or someone up today. They founded humorous that I liked
Speaker 1: their music. May explain to me like, well, this is
Speaker 1: music from our childhood, Like, what do you know about this? Again?
Speaker 1: I just thought it was normal because my parents. I'm
Speaker 1: not even saying they shield at me. It's just that
Speaker 1: they didn't tell me any better. They didn't tell me
Speaker 1: that I should be listening to Staying Alive by the
Speaker 1: Bags or Shadow Dancing by Andy Gibb, something contemporary or
Speaker 1: something new. It sounds like they listened to the advice
Speaker 1: their pediatrician gave them when you were born. Yes, my
Speaker 1: birth doctor was also studying child psychology. Shout out to
Speaker 1: doctor Gordon Hoodis. I mean he was a forward thinking,
Speaker 1: kind of hippie doctor. And Gordon was a fan of
Speaker 1: my dad's work, and I think he was more or
Speaker 1: less asking from an epigenetics standpoint. He wanted to know
Speaker 1: if the genes, the talent inside my dad could be
Speaker 1: somehow transferred to me via epigenetics, and would often ask
Speaker 1: during weekly visits like, okay, so does he have a
Speaker 1: sense of rhythm? Do you hear him like singing? All
Speaker 1: those things? And he really encouraged my mom to let
Speaker 1: me go as far as I can go with creativity.
Speaker 1: Like you might think he's making mud pies out of
Speaker 1: his food, but that's him being creative. You might think, oh,
Speaker 1: you're damaging my furniture, but that's him being creative. It's
Speaker 1: important to let him like lease up into the age
Speaker 1: of eight, when of course, like a knife or a
Speaker 1: fork inside the socket is dangerous, but let him find
Speaker 1: his creativity. And so they basically just let me abuse
Speaker 1: all the furniture until they decided, okay, we got to
Speaker 1: get you a drum set or something to this is
Speaker 1: what you hit on. You don't no longer have to
Speaker 1: hit these lamp shades, and lamp shades were my symbols,
Speaker 1: and of course the light ball would go out every time.
Speaker 1: So doctor Gordon heavily encouraged me to find my creativity.
Speaker 1: Once you do, embrace that creativity you're talking about and
Speaker 1: begin to make your own music. You form a band
Speaker 1: called The Roots. In time, the group lands at Gavin Records.
Speaker 1: But on the night of your record signing party, it
Speaker 1: all comes to a head between you and your family.
Speaker 1: What happens on December fifth, nineteen ninety three, it's really weird.
Speaker 1: So the night before, my mom tells me, I think,
Speaker 1: like on December third or December fourth, you know, we
Speaker 1: were so biss family. There's a lot of masking that happens.
Speaker 1: Like now, we're a rare black family that was very
Speaker 1: much into mental health and therapy, and we knew what
Speaker 1: a dysfunctional family was, like conversations that black people are
Speaker 1: just starting to have now in twenty twenty, we were
Speaker 1: having these conversations like in ninety two. And so my
Speaker 1: mom she told me first that she is making the
Speaker 1: decision to leave my dad and divorce him. For me,
Speaker 1: it was painful because I was the one kid on
Speaker 1: the block that had both mom and dad a parent
Speaker 1: teacher Knight, and my parents were beautiful, fashionable people, like
Speaker 1: I was the coolest kid because like we were the
Speaker 1: beautiful family and we were so buss family. Suddenly, like
Speaker 1: people are going to see that we're broken inside, just
Speaker 1: like you are, and so my way of coping her
Speaker 1: dealing with that also happens to happen the night we
Speaker 1: have our record celebration party. So when you're listening to
Speaker 1: our second album, do you want more? When you're listening
Speaker 1: to say what Man? That's pretty much that's all that's
Speaker 1: on my mind. My family, my life, everything that I
Speaker 1: knew was falling apart at this very moment. Otherwise be
Speaker 1: a celebratory night for us, us getting a record deal.
Speaker 1: Local Boys made Good. So what I remember of all
Speaker 1: of December was that I didn't want to go home.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to face the darkness she was going down.
Speaker 1: It was just me and my dad. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to face anything that had to do with my family
Speaker 1: fall apart. So pretty much I just stayed at the studio,
Speaker 1: Like I made excuses to stay at the studio. Everyone
Speaker 1: else would go home like six pm. Like we get
Speaker 1: there at twelve, work a little bit, do some lunch,
Speaker 1: and do some dinner, go home at eight o'clock, and
Speaker 1: from like eight o'clock till maybe four in the morning,
Speaker 1: maybe me and the assistant engineer. I just figured out, like, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: what is this Mike doing? What is this compression doing
Speaker 1: what if I recorded this way in that way. So
Speaker 1: I'll say that a lot of the education that I
Speaker 1: got in engineering and producing and figuring out how to
Speaker 1: make the studio work comes from that time period of
Speaker 1: not wanting to go home, of not wanting to go home,
Speaker 1: and when the engineer's worn out, I'd sleep on the couch.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'd go home in the morning when my dad's
Speaker 1: left in shower, change clothes and come back. But I
Speaker 1: realized a lot of the artists that we love their accessibility,
Speaker 1: their access to a studio. That's the difference between those
Speaker 1: records that we like and those records that we don't like.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, you work on the songs at
Speaker 1: home and then we go to studio and we're looking
Speaker 1: at the clock and you got five hours. It's almost
Speaker 1: like you know before up in it to twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: where we were working on Hamilton, the process of doing
Speaker 1: a Broadway record, and I was wondering, like, why do
Speaker 1: Broadway record sounds so lifeless. It's because they're thinking of
Speaker 1: there's a person there, like with the clock in their hands,
Speaker 1: there's a union person that really just soaks the joy
Speaker 1: out the room and he's like, okay, guys, we have
Speaker 1: three hours in twenty two minutes left. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't be creative when someone is there micromanaging you over
Speaker 1: your shoulder. So before Hamilton, you got the entire cast
Speaker 1: in the room and you did the entire play in
Speaker 1: front of a microphone top to finish, and the whole
Speaker 1: points to get out before clock strikes zero because of
Speaker 1: overages and whatever you put on tape, that's what you got.
Speaker 1: And the difference in Hamilton is that it was recorded
Speaker 1: like a real album, like coun't work on this song
Speaker 1: first and this song next and this song and you
Speaker 1: hear the difference and thus the world opens. So it's
Speaker 1: like if you're studying the studio, if you're studying everything
Speaker 1: about how to get the best sound out of that studio,
Speaker 1: it makes you a better creative. So that's what I
Speaker 1: did in the sort of the tail end of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, and that sort of set me on the path.
Speaker 1: I'm owned. Now we'll be right back after a quick break.
Speaker 1: A lot happens after that night after you break the
Speaker 1: news to your father, both in music history but also
Speaker 1: in the history of the roots. The death of Kurt
Speaker 1: Cobain in April of nineteen ninety four, prompts a call
Speaker 1: from your manager, Rich Nichols to get your second record finished.
Speaker 1: In less than a week, you and the group rushed
Speaker 1: to make that album. Do you want more? Then you
Speaker 1: flee to London where you have your Hendricks living in Europe.
Speaker 1: Moment the Beatles playing in Hamburg, you will find your
Speaker 1: songwriting the instrumentation from that philadelph Half Life is born
Speaker 1: and then released in ninety six. But I want to
Speaker 1: go to the late nineties here when you go to
Speaker 1: your label Geffen Records and make a proposal that most
Speaker 1: bands probably wouldn't make. Yes, as you said, we creatively
Speaker 1: and technically exile to Europe. It was important for us
Speaker 1: to go to Europe because there really just wasn't a
Speaker 1: space for a band to exist in the United States.
Speaker 1: And oftentimes maybe our agent will hold back that we're
Speaker 1: a rap group, like, oh, you know, they're jazzy, they
Speaker 1: do poetry. Oh yeah, have the guys come down, And
Speaker 1: often it's a case of like, I don't like rap music,
Speaker 1: but I like you guys. That happened a lot, but
Speaker 1: there really wasn't an outlet that was as open to
Speaker 1: our music, as you can say the grunge movement or
Speaker 1: for rock music. So we moved to the UK in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four. The two things that we learned and
Speaker 1: that whole experience was the power of jam sessions and
Speaker 1: the power of festivals. And so everywhere there was a
Speaker 1: jam session. We couldn't believe it, Like yo, musicians still
Speaker 1: get together and play. That was never happening. I had
Speaker 1: to go to performing arts to meet my musician friends.
Speaker 1: I had to go to settlement music school. Wasn't like
Speaker 1: if I were born in the fifties, then yes, everyone
Speaker 1: on the block was a musician. We all gathered in
Speaker 1: the living room or an abasement, we jammed. But that
Speaker 1: wasn't happening anymore. So we learned the jam session, and
Speaker 1: we learned the festival. Six hundred festivals in the UK
Speaker 1: by that point. In the United States you could count
Speaker 1: festivals on one hand. As a result, we were determined
Speaker 1: one to bring back the jam session with us when
Speaker 1: we came back to the States finally in ninety eight
Speaker 1: ninety nine. And also the festival, which you know, we
Speaker 1: wound up doing the Roots Picnic around like two thousand
Speaker 1: and seven, So maybe like ten years from men. So
Speaker 1: in the case of Jam Sessions, we told our label
Speaker 1: in order for us to really hit pay dirt in
Speaker 1: a way that satisfactories you and justifies all these millions
Speaker 1: that you're spending, you're going to have to invest in
Speaker 1: the story. Part of the story is gathering a flock.
Speaker 1: We were a one man island. You know. We weren't
Speaker 1: hanging with Wu Tang Clan. We weren't friends with our idols,
Speaker 1: like we weren't chilling with Day Lost Soul in a
Speaker 1: trap all quests like you know, occasionally we see Gang
Speaker 1: Star over in Europe because their management was from the UK,
Speaker 1: so they explained to them, like, there's the world most
Speaker 1: rap artists. They just they released the record. They tore
Speaker 1: the States because it's fun. They might do one or
Speaker 1: two weeks and outside of the States and then next
Speaker 1: thing you know, it's over. Whereas we were doing like
Speaker 1: two hundred dates a year across the world. So coming home,
Speaker 1: we decided, Okay, the first thing we have to do
Speaker 1: is get a chef, because nothing says Jam Session I'll
Speaker 1: be there quicker than free food. So we got the
Speaker 1: best chef in Philadelphia. Shout out to Chef Terry. And
Speaker 1: then when the world found out, like, wait, Terry's cooking
Speaker 1: at quest Low's house. What I'm there? So the music
Speaker 1: was really just an afterthought. Oh music was absolutely like
Speaker 1: we didn't even you know. It just happen to be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: come to Mirror's house and Chef Terry's cooking, and oh
Speaker 1: look at here, here's some instruments, you know. But as
Speaker 1: a result, this is where unknown Jill Scott comes every week.
Speaker 1: This is where Kendrew the family soul music, Soul Child.
Speaker 1: The jam sessions got so out of hand that at
Speaker 1: one point I was just like, yo, man, why is
Speaker 1: the pizza guys on the microphone? Like this is now
Speaker 1: a free fall. Like Balao was a teenager in high
Speaker 1: school from my old high school, and he's like a
Speaker 1: free jazz thing, and I'm like you he screams a lot.
Speaker 1: And then when it really got out of hand, it's
Speaker 1: like the next door neighbor or friends of mine saying like, yo,
Speaker 1: I know this ten year old she sings like an adult,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, dude, you can't have a ten year
Speaker 1: old here at eleven o'clock at night at these jam sessions.
Speaker 1: But sure enough, Jasmine Sullivan as a ten year old
Speaker 1: is at these jam sessions and then you know, my
Speaker 1: home girl from Atlanta just want to come up her
Speaker 1: names and d ire. She plays guitar just week after
Speaker 1: week after week. So suddenly it's eve Beenie, Seagull, Freeway,
Speaker 1: Jill Scott Music, Soul Child, Floetry. They started hearing about
Speaker 1: Oh there's magic and Philly, we need to come here,
Speaker 1: and it comes to these jam sessions. So they're coming
Speaker 1: from the UK because they heard that something's happening in Philly.
Speaker 1: They came over and then lay Nubians from France. Same thing.
Speaker 1: Suddenly we built a story. I'll say at least fourteen
Speaker 1: to fifteen record deals came out of that situation in
Speaker 1: the first draft and then the second draft. I won't
Speaker 1: hesitate to say that literally, any black artist, we're beyond
Speaker 1: that now. Any artists that you see performing right now,
Speaker 1: I guarantee you it's a one degree separation that that
Speaker 1: entire band is being led by one of the original
Speaker 1: seventeen musicians that made up of those jam sessions from
Speaker 1: black We called the Black Lily Jam Sessions back in
Speaker 1: two thousand, like back when Adam Blackstone was probably fifteen
Speaker 1: back then, like right now, you're not doing anything on
Speaker 1: a stage with any band member unless you have aversation
Speaker 1: with Adam Blackstone. Like if you're Ed Sheeran, Adam Blackstone's
Speaker 1: your guy if you're sweetie. Like literally, Adam Blackstone is
Speaker 1: probably the musical director of at least sixty to seventy
Speaker 1: percent of all music output. Like he doesn't have to
Speaker 1: physically be there. He's now to the point where he's
Speaker 1: now just creating musical directors of other musicians from Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that one little pebble of a theory of
Speaker 1: let's have jam sessions and let's get good music out
Speaker 1: of it. And as a result, things of all apart
Speaker 1: came from that moment and really the neo soul sort
Speaker 1: of epicenter that story starts during that time period. These
Speaker 1: jam sessions placed the roots in this larger artistic community.
Speaker 1: But I also know for a long time you felt
Speaker 1: the plight of the group was like the story of
Speaker 1: the Tortoise and the Hair in your book you write
Speaker 1: there we were shell shuffling along, releasing our records and
Speaker 1: playing our shows, building our audience and registering with critics.
Speaker 1: As all these rabbits rushed by us I figured that
Speaker 1: we'd keep trundling and that eventually we'd see all those
Speaker 1: rabbits sleeping by the side of the road as we
Speaker 1: passed them by. Eventually you realized you had the wrong metaphor.
Speaker 1: When did that epiphany happen? It's kind of happening now,
Speaker 1: because here's the deal. It's nineteen ninety two. I'm busking
Speaker 1: on South Street with Tariq, and we're busking five hours
Speaker 1: at a time, and we're having jam sessions. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're freestyling on the corner of South Street. And in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety two, I'm thinking, yeah, it was cool to
Speaker 1: make a twelve inch rap single or whatever. But you know,
Speaker 1: I really don't know what's ahead for us. But I
Speaker 1: do know at that point the average rap span of
Speaker 1: a rap career was like maybe five to six years.
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking in nineteen ninety two, like nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: it's a long way from now, Like we'll be flying
Speaker 1: in space by then and this will probably be over
Speaker 1: because you know, this only lasts for five years. Always,
Speaker 1: in my mind never had the wherewithal or the elastic
Speaker 1: thoughts to think, will I still be here at fifty
Speaker 1: and It's so weird that just now, like July second
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one is literally when the idea of
Speaker 1: what I truly thought success was really started to unfurl,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's weird that, yes, it
Speaker 1: was happening the whole time, and all those moments like
Speaker 1: we're in the Grammy and making Voodoo with de'angelo and
Speaker 1: doing the Phrenology record and playing these big stadiums and
Speaker 1: selling out Radio City Music Hall and then being on
Speaker 1: the number one late night television show and all like,
Speaker 1: all these things are happening. But you know, I never
Speaker 1: got outside of myself to see if we made it.
Speaker 1: It's not like we did it in a splashy way.
Speaker 1: I'm actually very grateful. Like if you were to ask
Speaker 1: me now, if there's one act that was sort of
Speaker 1: like neck and neck with competition back then, Like if
Speaker 1: you're looking in terms of who I felt competition was
Speaker 1: the Roots and the Fujis. So let's go to nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety seven. Let's go to nineteen ninety eight, and if
Speaker 1: you were to ask me now, the Score just sold
Speaker 1: twelve million units worldwide, They sold a group of Grammys.
Speaker 1: They are the darlings of hip hop, live bands or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like if you were to ask me, would you rather
Speaker 1: have four and a half mics in the source or
Speaker 1: would you have like your critical acclaim for illadelph half life,
Speaker 1: or would you rather have the Fuji's you know, twelve
Speaker 1: million selling like selling out what I would have probably
Speaker 1: chose the latter. I would probably chose that. But knowing
Speaker 1: what I know now, as slow as it happened, and
Speaker 1: there's really not a precedent for someone to start trending
Speaker 1: at the age of fifty. Like if someone were to
Speaker 1: come up to me back in nineteen ninety two as
Speaker 1: a twenty one year old and say, look, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be a very interesting journey. You're gonna make a
Speaker 1: lot of history, you're gonna have some success, but your
Speaker 1: idea of like, wow, my dreams really came true. You
Speaker 1: won't even feel that for half an inkling of a
Speaker 1: moment until you're probably fifty. And I'm telling that person
Speaker 1: that Jacob only figure, like that ghost figure, Like wait,
Speaker 1: I'm twenty one. Now you're trying to tell me that
Speaker 1: I'm still going to be a thing at fifty and
Speaker 1: at that like fifties, when I'm really gonna start coming
Speaker 1: into my powers, and I would have never believed you.
Speaker 1: But quest doesn't seem like your manager, rich Nichols, who
Speaker 1: passed away in twenty fourteen. It's almost like he had
Speaker 1: the roadmap for you before you did. I'm gonna literally
Speaker 1: tell you here's something weird. So, yeah, Richard Nichols, he
Speaker 1: had about with leukemia, which I'll say first of all,
Speaker 1: to know Richard Nichols is to know the mensa level
Speaker 1: intelligence that he had, Like his IQ was way beyond
Speaker 1: like things like one seventy nine or something like he
Speaker 1: was a genius. Like again, I'm here. On paper, there's
Speaker 1: really should not be a logical reason why I'm still here,
Speaker 1: but the faith that he had and the confidence that
Speaker 1: he had to execute that is evidence of it. So
Speaker 1: the last year of Rich's life, he's not able to
Speaker 1: talk and communicate, but his brain is still sharp and
Speaker 1: he's able to type. So he's spending the majority of
Speaker 1: his time in the hospital with leukemia pretty much waiting
Speaker 1: for the Grim Reaper to come and get him. So
Speaker 1: he used every last second to plan me and Tariq's life,
Speaker 1: like he used the last four months of his life
Speaker 1: literally typing out a twenty five year manifesto. His last
Speaker 1: words in that manifesto are all right to me, if
Speaker 1: you're broke by seventy, then this is not my fault.
Speaker 1: Like I'm giving you all the tools you need. So
Speaker 1: all that you see me doing now is literally me
Speaker 1: following think of Biff from Back to the Future too,
Speaker 1: like having the almanac. That's exactly what it like. There's
Speaker 1: a manifestation paper and this is what you're gonna do
Speaker 1: when I'm going and dead. But my last conversation with him,
Speaker 1: the Roots just play Radio City Music Hall with Nas,
Speaker 1: and you know, he could talk a little bit. He
Speaker 1: was asking how the show went, and I remarked to
Speaker 1: him that, yo, you'll never guess NAS has a band now,
Speaker 1: And we were kind of chuckling at it because again,
Speaker 1: in the early stages of the Roots, like the Roots
Speaker 1: really weren't allowed to play reindeer games. You were the
Speaker 1: odd guy at the odd ball out, like, oh, you
Speaker 1: guys are a band, you're not really hip hop. There
Speaker 1: was like a dismissive few I mean not, I can't
Speaker 1: blame him. This wasn't our time yet, and so one
Speaker 1: of those people's kind of Nas like didn't sort of
Speaker 1: look at us like as like, oh, this guy's good.
Speaker 1: So we did a show with NAS previously before and
Speaker 1: Nas was mind blown at how good we were, and
Speaker 1: we were shocked at how mind blown NAS was, and
Speaker 1: it finally hit me. It's it's like two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: It hit me then, like, uh, this is NAS's first
Speaker 1: time really seeing the roots, Like even though we've been
Speaker 1: out for fourteen years, he never bothered to see if
Speaker 1: we were actually good or not. He just looked at us,
Speaker 1: dismissed us, and never That's the story with everyone in
Speaker 1: this thing. And now Nas has a band. We were
Speaker 1: sort of chuckling at it, like, oh, people finally see
Speaker 1: our side of the fence. And my manager says something.
Speaker 1: I don't know how we got in this conversation, but
Speaker 1: he said we were talking about like the Winter circle
Speaker 1: and the Loser circle, and he's like, well, the thing
Speaker 1: is is that I never designed you guys to be
Speaker 1: in the Winter circle. Everybody in rap music once that
Speaker 1: moment that your tape parade there what we call the
Speaker 1: Bentley movement, that slow motion make it rain in the club,
Speaker 1: the celebratory hype Williams video effect, Like every rapper dreams
Speaker 1: of that moment. And we never had that moment, and
Speaker 1: he says, I never designed you guys to have a
Speaker 1: winner circle moment. He's like, however, I'm going to make
Speaker 1: sure that you guys are the last to lose, so
Speaker 1: you might not win by your definition of winning, but
Speaker 1: I'll be damned if you guys are at the last
Speaker 1: men standing. And that was like our last conversation with
Speaker 1: each other. But I wanted just to quickly note how
Speaker 1: important dreaming is. There's a clip of Michael Jackson on
Speaker 1: Soul Train where Don Cornelius asked him, like, what do
Speaker 1: you do in your spare time? And he says, you know,
Speaker 1: just sit back in our daydream. Of all the silly
Speaker 1: adages I've ever heard Michael say, I used to think
Speaker 1: that was the silliest, Like did he actually just say
Speaker 1: on Soul Train he likes to daydream? But now I
Speaker 1: absolutely grab people by the collar and insist implore them
Speaker 1: please daydream more. That's so important to your development. And
Speaker 1: only until maybe a year and a half ago, I'm
Speaker 1: creating defensively. I'm creating like I don't want the Rizza
Speaker 1: and Jay Dilla to think I'm whack. Until Summer Soul
Speaker 1: came out, was the first time that I decided to
Speaker 1: have desires and to have goals and dreams, and I
Speaker 1: would like this film to be received well. And I
Speaker 1: do a lot of things where I do cool stuff
Speaker 1: and people don't discover it until fifteen years later, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you worked on Hamilton's how do you know that? Like
Speaker 1: those things, this is the first time that I actually
Speaker 1: had a fantasy or a dream for something and it
Speaker 1: happened beyond my wildest imagination. So that's kind of the
Speaker 1: thing where I think dreams are important and we need
Speaker 1: to dream more. Well, this brings us full circle back
Speaker 1: to Summer of Soul, which of course was born out
Speaker 1: of dreaming. But it's also a movie that, as you say,
Speaker 1: recovers the past for the future, and it's the past,
Speaker 1: and I think your role as a kind of archivist
Speaker 1: that reminds me of an interview with Nina Simone in
Speaker 1: the late sixties. It's one that I know you're fond of,
Speaker 1: and in it she says to me, we are the
Speaker 1: most beautiful creatures in the world. Black people. My job
Speaker 1: is to make them more curious about where they came
Speaker 1: from and their own identity and pride in that identity.
Speaker 1: That's why in my songs, I try to make them
Speaker 1: as powerful as possible, just to make them curious about themselves.
Speaker 1: Because we don't know anything about ourselves. We don't even
Speaker 1: have the pride and the dignity of African people. We
Speaker 1: can't even talk about where we came from. We don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like a lost race. Facts, actually real facts. I'm
Speaker 1: one of the few human beings of African American descent.
Speaker 1: Up until three years ago, I just found out I
Speaker 1: came from benin the West part of Africa. Not many
Speaker 1: people have the luxury of sort of having the celebrity
Speaker 1: route that leads to discovering who you are. And the
Speaker 1: moment that I found out I came from something changes
Speaker 1: in you bring something in you. I absolutely believe in
Speaker 1: that statement to be curious about yourself and to know
Speaker 1: your history, and I will say that that statement is highly,
Speaker 1: highly important. The number one idiom my dad used to
Speaker 1: always say is like, you can't know where you're going
Speaker 1: unless you know where you came from. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people aren't aware of the fact that we
Speaker 1: only call ourselves black simply because we don't know if
Speaker 1: we're Sierra Leone. We don't know if we came from Nairobi.
Speaker 1: We don't know if we came from Ghana or if
Speaker 1: we came from Nigeria. So a lot of us now
Speaker 1: are just reconnecting to our roots, no pun intended, and
Speaker 1: that makes a difference. That makes such a difference for
Speaker 1: me alone and discovering that I came from Benin and
Speaker 1: doing my research in the last two or three years.
Speaker 1: I used to laugh at people when they talk about
Speaker 1: like you should meditate more and dada da. I used
Speaker 1: to think that was like really hippie dippy, like, oh yes,
Speaker 1: Sting goes to the rainforests and sits and meditates and
Speaker 1: dad like. I used to just laugh at that stuff
Speaker 1: and be so dismissive only to real lies like I
Speaker 1: came from my culture, like the Ethe religion and all
Speaker 1: those things that I've read about in the history of Benin.
Speaker 1: It's very important. It just does something in you. It's
Speaker 1: awesome that she said that, and I hope people receive that.
Speaker 1: She said, my job is to make them more curious
Speaker 1: about where they came from about themselves. I know you're
Speaker 1: about to turn fifty one, but in thinking about this film,
Speaker 1: your book, your DJ sets the music you make. Are
Speaker 1: you finding a greater kinship in that mission statement, in
Speaker 1: this role of preserving and restoring the history that people
Speaker 1: perhaps don't know. The shortest version of that answer is
Speaker 1: absolutely yes. Weird enough, I had a conversation with Jimmy
Speaker 1: Fallon via David Letterman when we first started this show,
Speaker 1: and David gifted Jimmy with something, and it came with
Speaker 1: a note and said, just know that your entire life
Speaker 1: experience is going to be on display with this television show.
Speaker 1: That you're doing, everything that you're doing, everything that you
Speaker 1: have experienced in life, You're going to use it for
Speaker 1: the show, I guarantee you. And at first I was like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe he's just talking about like comedy, not from music
Speaker 1: or whatever. And sure enough I realized everything inside me
Speaker 1: gets put on display. To be honest, it's like, in
Speaker 1: the last two years I've learned just as a human
Speaker 1: being with this film. Maybe I started off thinking, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm gonna be the funkiest drummer ever, and
Speaker 1: maybe I expanded a little bit like, Okay, I could
Speaker 1: be a drummer and a producer, and then I expand
Speaker 1: it further, Well, I could be a drummer, producer, and
Speaker 1: maybe I could develop plays. It didn't hit me till
Speaker 1: now the common denominator of all those things is that
Speaker 1: I'm a storyteller. And that was sort of the selling
Speaker 1: point of what really made me feel comfortable to direct
Speaker 1: this movie, because they all said, well, look, you teach school,
Speaker 1: you write books, these DJ sets, like everything you do
Speaker 1: you tell stories with, So why wouldn't this movie come
Speaker 1: easy to you because you're such You're a storyteller. And
Speaker 1: once I thought about it, I was like, Okay, maybe
Speaker 1: that is my thing. But it's so weird. It's like
Speaker 1: your life. There's BC and there's a D. BC is
Speaker 1: sort of like you determine what you think your life
Speaker 1: is going to be and you try to make that happy,
Speaker 1: you try to force that will, and then a D
Speaker 1: is sort of like what the universe tells you what
Speaker 1: you're going to be. Because I you know, at twenty,
Speaker 1: I'm not thinking at all that this is going to
Speaker 1: be my lane at all. Yet the tools are there
Speaker 1: and it's natural. So I guess at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, I'm not a drummer, I'm not a food activist,
Speaker 1: I'm not a producer, I'm not a designer, none of
Speaker 1: those things. I'm I'm a storyteller and I'm just realizing
Speaker 1: that in the last few years. Well I'm glad you've
Speaker 1: made that realization, because I, for one am looking forward
Speaker 1: to seeing those stories, however they manifest in the years
Speaker 1: to come. I appreciate it, Sam, quest Love, thank you
Speaker 1: for the time. Thank you, and that's our show. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Carlene Donovan and Franny Lele at the Oriole Company,
Speaker 1: Shelby kim Lake at Searchlight, and of course quest Love.
Speaker 1: You can listen to the Summer of Soul soundtrack wherever
Speaker 1: you get your music. If you haven't seen the film,
Speaker 1: you really should. It's available to stream on Hulu. We'll
Speaker 1: be sure to link to all of that and more
Speaker 1: in our show notes at talk easypod dot com. Once
Speaker 1: you're there, you'll find our back catalog of over two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty episodes with artists and activists like Tessa Thompson,
Speaker 1: Run the Jewels, Lord, Janelle Money, Hassan Minhaj, Brittany Howard,
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Speaker 1: Easy would not be possible without our incredible team. The
Speaker 1: show is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Janick so Bravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's
Speaker 1: Talk was edited by Clarise Gavara and mixed by Andrew Vastola.
Speaker 1: Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations by Shoshanoy, Video and graphics
Speaker 1: by Ian Chang, Derek gaberzach Ian Jones, Ethan Seneca and
Speaker 1: Laila Register. Special thanks to Patrice Lee, Kylin Ung, Shiloh Fagan,
Speaker 1: Nikki Spina, and Callie Syringis. I'd also like to thank
Speaker 1: the team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond Heller Faine, Meila Belle,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Maya Kanegg, Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel,
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwin. I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here
Speaker 1: next week with actor Kate Blanchette. Until then, stay safe
Speaker 1: and so long.