Creators Anonymous: Questlove’s Vice Of Choice

Despite his ubiquitous afro, Questlove has worn plenty of hats in his decades-long career. A serial creative, the Philadelphia native is a textbook multihyphenate, with an array of projects helmed as vast as the crowds at his band’s annual Roots Picnic .

Questlove Clarifies Controversial Remarks On Drake, Kendrick Lamar Feud: "I'm Triggered"

Aside from rocking and curating festivals, the legendary drummer has also documented them. His film, Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) , racked up a bevy of honors, such as Best Documentary Feature at the 94th Academy Awards, and Best Music Film at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards.

Needless to say, his reputation as a musical maestro precedes him. He and his bandmates are considered one of the greatest Hip-Hop acts of all time, with Grammy Awards , hit singles, and classic albums to boot. Yet, with all that goes on in the world of Questlove, he still finds time to share new stories and perspectives in literary form and has written or contributed to several books throughout the past decade.

Since first gaining acclaim as a scribe with his 2013 memoir Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove , he has tackled subjects ranging from the legacy and impact of Soul Train to food-centric fare, all the while keeping things fresh, informative, and aligned to his view of the culture.

Earlier this month, Questlove released his latest book, Hip-Hop Is History , the sequel to his 2021 book, Music Is History , which was published by Abrams Image. Released through his own publishing company, Auwa Books, Hip-Hop Is History includes personal accounts from Questlove’s own journey and experience with the music and environment surrounding it, as well as the players involved.

“For a lot of us, Hip-Hop is a marriage,” the 53-year-old tells VIBE via Zoom. “For some of us, Hip-Hop is our side chick. For some of us, Hip-Hop is our girlfriend that we don’t want to get married to. All of us have relationships with Hip-Hop, I’m just one of the millions of stories out there with it.”

Below, we speak with Questlove about his personal history with Hip-Hop, the ills of wealth and fame, the 25th anniversary of The Roots’ classic 1999 album Things Fall Apart , and more.

You recently released your latest book, Hip-Hop Is History , which is described as a “personal reflection” of the culture’s first 50 years of existence. How do you feel about the reception?

Any publishing day that happens or any release date, for me, I still get goosebumps. Be it a record, be it a movie, be it a book. Books are almost longer lasting and more of a reflection of you than albums or any fictional works that you could put together. But I think it’s all very necessary for a lot of us to get into the storytelling mood, a different kind of storytelling mode that Hip-Hop might not necessarily be a part of the narrative. I know for a lot of us releasing records is Hip-Hop’s way of telling the story but I wish that a lot of my Hip-op constituents would actually follow suit, in terms of telling about their stories and their life experiences.

When did your personal history with Hip-Hop begin?

I think the moment I realized that two and two was four. I’m technically two years older than the culture. I had already grown up with the seeds that would kind of flourish over the culture in the next decades.

Be it the music, because my father and mother had an expansive record collection when I was growing up, like 3,000 records. So even without knowing it was Hip-Hop, I was growing up with those breakbeats which, of course, inspired me to be a drummer…but to actually be eight years old at night time doing the dishes at my grandmom’s house and you could hear “Rappers Delight” come on the clock radio.

Matter of fact, I think I’m one of the luckier people to be able to witness a lot of Hip-Hop firsts and to be able to talk about it. Unfortunately, in jazz music, we’re not going to have reaction shots of Dizzy Gillespie when he first heard a chromatic chord. We’re not going to have reaction shots [of] when Charlie Parker is showing Miles [Davis] and Max Roach hard bop, the fact that he can play 300 notes in a minute.

A lot of the Renaissance innovative era of the jazz world might be lost to history because there wasn’t anyone to see it as an art form or to really document it properly. So, the fact that I’m of age to actually remember the environment to remember how I felt, to remember its impact and ripple effect on the world is an amazing place to be in. And the fact that I’m still alive today to tell that story is important.

Are those personal stories intertwined throughout the book?

One of the main differences in Hip-Hop Is History and my last book, which was Music Is History , [is] I had so many write-ups and music as history that I had to edit it down to a more palatable size. So a lot of the Hip-Hop stories that were in my last book Music Is History kind of got kicked to the curb.

And it was only maybe like a year into it, like at the Grammys when we did The Hip-Hop 50 tribute, that’s when my publisher came to me and was like ‘Hey, not for nothing, but you still have a lot of material left over from your Music Is History book. And obviously, we’re all celebrating the Hip-Hop 50th anniversary thing, why don’t you come up with kind of a sequel book to Music Is History and do Hip-Hop Is History ?’

And at first, I didn’t know how I felt about it because unlike the music book, it’s easier for me to talk about something when I wasn’t part of it. It’s easy to share a memory from when I was 11 years old, listening to a Michael Jackson song, as opposed to when I’m part of that session. And with Hip-Hop, I’m kind of limited because I can really only talk about 1992, 1993 before suddenly I’m a part of the story. And it’s hard to be biased or sorry it’s hard to be biased about something when you yourself are also part of the horse race that the song you’re talking about is also racing.

Questlove Clarifies 2Pac "Hit 'Em Up" Criticism Following Backlash

So I will say that it was a thin line of actual facts and kind of my life through it. For example, my feelings on Rakim’s flow or the production or the songwriting genius of Naughty by Nature is going to be a little bit different than, say, my reaction to Griselda. It’s a little bit different being a fan and being a participant and just being an observer. But I think, for the most part, I did history justice.

What are some insights that you learned about that you recalled while compiling these stories?

Well, the main takeaway that I learned about the culture. If you look at social media, you’ll see the kind of harsh way that people my age look down on modern Hip-Hop now. You’ll see a lot of anti-mumbling culture. ‘This generation may not even be rhyming words with each other. What’s with this generation? I don’t get it.’ The first thing that I learned is that Hip-Hop is going to mirror the drug of which we choose to self-soothe.

A lot of us get into ways of dealing with the pain of life by self-soothing our pain away. I had a conversation with Chuck D about the music of Public Enemy and at the time, I thought he was joking. But he said that their chaotic music style [is because] ‘We kind of want to be music’s worst nightmare. We want our sound to feel like the crack epidemic. We want our sound to feel like the crack high that one feels when they take crack.’

And I was like well, why would you choose that?’ He was like, ‘Because that’s the epidemic that’s affecting our community right now. So the music actually has to reflect the panic of effect of that feeling.’ And then there was a time in 1992 when that just went away and then suddenly got slower. And Dr. Dre took over. And because his music was The Chronic I was like, ‘I wonder if this laid back slow thing is The Dr. Dre weed effect of The Chronic having on the culture.

And then by 1997, when the sound of Bad Boy is in the clubs, when the sound of the Neptunes and Swizz Beatz are first started, the kind of club, sexy, poppin’ bottles and models environment was more like the drug they were using. That was ecstasy. So what I started to notice was that in five-year increments, Hip-Hop will emulate whatever the drug of its culture was. When you’re under that type of microscope, that to me is a better explanation for why Hip-Hop is where it is. If you want to know where Hip-Hop is you have to look at how we cope with life’s pain.

What I learned about myself is more or less about the importance of storytelling and the importance of how important documenting your story is. I think, for a lot of us, we just think that it’s not important, but 20 years from now, what you are doing right now is called history. And I try to stress to a lot of us in the culture that no matter what you do, you’ve got to document your history. So I tell artists now, save all your lyric pads. Save all of your backpacks from eons ago.

A lot of us are tempted to throw stuff away to make space for other things, but put it in storage, old newspaper clippings, old articles, old magazines. All those things are going to mean something 25, 30 years from now. For new artists, I tell them to take photos, take videos. Because you’re going to want to tell your story about what you did 40 years ago and people need that context. So I stress to people, document your history now because you’ll need it.

L ast year, you also launched your own book publishing company, Auwa Books. Is Hip-Hop Is History the first book released under that company?

The very first book in print we did was the autobiography of the memoir of Sly Stone. Right now as we speak, I’m just finishing up my second movie, which is the Sly and the Family Stone documentary. At the time, it just seemed like a no-brainer to have Sly tell his story because Sly’s been extremely reclusive, kind of hands off in terms of accessibility to sharing his story. Sly is one of the first, what I call postmodern Black Superstars. Sly was one of the first post-civil rights era superstars.

His moment happened after the Civil Rights period, after Jim Crow, after the Reconstruction, after slavery, which means that an artist like Ray Charles still had to deal with the segregation restrictions of the Jim Crow period of Blacks in America. And that’s not to say that after 1968 the veil has been lifted and all is fine with the world, but there were a smaller amount of technical law restrictions on Sly Stone’s life than, say, James Brown or Chuck Berry or Aretha Franklin or whoever came before him. And what winds up happening is he gets everything he ever wanted. The world was his oyster.

He completely could have [had] anything you ever wanted and yet and still, he managed to figure out a way to self-sabotage it. And self-sabotage is often an epidemic amongst our celebrities that’s very much happening to this day as we speak. Just think of any artist that you asked, Well, why do they keep getting in trouble? Why do they keep getting arrested? Why are they in jail? Why did they die? Why do they cancel gigs without warning? Why did they show up three hours late to shows? Why do they stop making music all together?’ It leads back to self-soothing. And people think addiction is just like drinking. There’s drugs. There’s gambling, there’s overworking. There’s cutting [yourself], there’s food. There’s sex. There’s like 34 different addictions and a lot of our artists are trying to deal or cope with the difficulties of success.

Which I know sounds weird to hear because Hip-Hop and our parents kind of fed us this narrative that if we work hard and we make a lot of money, then all of our problems are going to be solved. But if you kind of look at everyone who’s made a lot of money, they don’t look too happy right now. Matter of fact, those with the most money are going through the most hell right now. Because they were told if we work hard and we hustle, get this money, we’re good. And it’s not that. And there’s a level of guilt that happens when you and just you are singled out and given success and others can’t share that with you. And that’s the story of Sly Stone. So in his memoir, he shares that. He delves into that a lot with his movie that I’m doing. Hopefully [it] will help us, not only as artists, but human beings.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Things Fall Apart . What’s it like to see the legacy of that album, 25 years later?

Hip-Hop is such an ageist culture. And it’s not our fault because, before Hip-Hop, a lot of us were raised in households in which we weren’t [allowed] to speak unless spoken to. We didn’t have an opinion. What we felt or what we cared about didn’t matter, ‘Until I speak to you, you don’t say nothing.’ And then Hip-Hop comes along and suddenly turns the table and gives us a voice. So there was a period in which the tenth anniversary would come or the 15th anniversary would come and I would try to duck and dodge it. And really not allow myself to celebrate it because I too used to think that if you celebrate something, you’re a relic.

And if you’re a relic, then you’re irrelevant. And if you’re irrelevant, no one cares about you anymore. So if anything, I think it took the pandemic for me to realize the importance of giving one’s flowers or the importance of celebration. The fact that I’m actually allowed to witness it is something that I don’t take for granted. But that doesn’t mean that we’re resting on our laurels. We were in the middle of making our new album, we’re now getting close to the end of it. I’ve been saying that for the last few years. I don’t think people believe me anymore, but I feel blessed to have witnessed such a magical thing happen. People don’t get to see their dreams come true and not only have we gotten to see our dreams come true, but we got to see it flourish. And other dreams happened as a result of it. So I’m very proud of that record.

Questlove Calls 2Pac's "Hit 'Em Up" The "Weakest" Diss Song