Speaker 1: Good people, good people, good people. What's up? This is Questlove? Yes, Questlove.
Speaker 1: I hope you heard of me. I'm excited to tell
Speaker 1: you about my brand new book. I'm still writing books.
Speaker 1: It's called hip Hop Is History. Hip Hop Is History,
Speaker 1: released on my own imprint, oh Books, That's right, au
Speaker 1: Wa Books. When hip hop first emerged in the seventies,
Speaker 1: I really wasn't expected to become the cultural force that
Speaker 1: it was. Many people dismissed it as a fad. However,
Speaker 1: as a young kid growing up in Philadelphia, it was
Speaker 1: everything to me. Like I would stay up late at
Speaker 1: night with my radio recording everything, studying it, and I
Speaker 1: saved my money to buy the vinyl the next day
Speaker 1: as soon as it landed, even made my songs. You
Speaker 1: know hey. Six decades later, here I am now as
Speaker 1: an award winning musician and filmmaker, a New York Times
Speaker 1: bestselling author, a producer, culinary entrepreneur, co founder of a
Speaker 1: little band called The Roots, and other things in between.
Speaker 1: But in everything I do, I try to promote the
Speaker 1: history of this culture and music. And I'm really proud
Speaker 1: to present to you hip Hop's history. And this book
Speaker 1: explores the last fifty years of the creative and cultural
Speaker 1: forces that made in shape hip hop, highlighting both the
Speaker 1: forgotten and the influential gems that build this culture altogether. Basically,
Speaker 1: here's a quickie preview of my new book, hip Hop
Speaker 1: Is History. McMillan the audio presents hip Hop Is History
Speaker 1: by Questlove with Ben Greener. This, of course is Questlove Introduction.
Speaker 1: I'm writing from the summer of twenty twenty three, the
Speaker 1: year that has been officially designated as the fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: of hip hop. The designation stends from the date mythic
Speaker 1: but also real, of a August eleventh, nineteen seventy three
Speaker 1: back to school party in the Bronx, held in the
Speaker 1: wreck room of an apartment building at fifteen twenty Sedgwick Avenue,
Speaker 1: planned by a Jamaican born team named Cindy Campbell. She
Speaker 1: made the decorations and made up a pricing structure a
Speaker 1: quarter for girls for admission, fifty cent for boys, and
Speaker 1: concessions that included seventy five cent hot dogs and featuring
Speaker 1: Cindy's older brother, Clive, nicknamed Cool Herk as a result
Speaker 1: of his imposing physical stature. Herk was short for Hercules
Speaker 1: Furnishing entertainment that consisted of a DJ set in which
Speaker 1: he spum funk records using a novel technique that foregrounded
Speaker 1: the beats or break beats, isolating them and repeating them
Speaker 1: in ways that not only provided a new space for
Speaker 1: dancers or breakdancing, but also constructed a frame over which
Speaker 1: hurt construtch, extended wraps or commentaries. I have my quibbles
Speaker 1: for picking this state as a birth date, for reasons
Speaker 1: I will explain. But no one can question the fact
Speaker 1: of hip hop's birth because no one can question what
Speaker 1: followed decades of innovation, achievement, energy, artistry, and history, meaning
Speaker 1: decades of life. History is never simple. It's layers upon layers.
Speaker 1: But what exactly is this miraculous mercurial genre that has
Speaker 1: given so much to me and so many other artists,
Speaker 1: and to which we are trying in turn to give
Speaker 1: something back. Big question, long answer to follow. The story
Speaker 1: begins just after Thanksgiving of twenty twenty two. Leftover turkey
Speaker 1: is still the refrigerator. My manager, Sean Gee and the
Speaker 1: television producers Jesse Collins and Dion harm And came to me.
Speaker 1: They had a question, The Grammys want to do something
Speaker 1: for Hip Hop fifty Would you lead it? How do
Speaker 1: you feel about putting something together? I'm the king of
Speaker 1: yes and the victim of it too. Out of muscle
Speaker 1: memory and habit, I agreed to a job before I
Speaker 1: think about what it actually involves, what I'm getting myself into,
Speaker 1: and what I might need to get myself out of.
Speaker 1: Of course, I said, no problem, whatsoever. I could do
Speaker 1: this in my sleep. But sleep was exactly what didn't happen.
Speaker 1: I got right to work trying to tell the story
Speaker 1: of the genre. First by building playlists and sourcing history.
Speaker 1: I knew I would need headliners, big artists, and I
Speaker 1: would also need important artists who might not have sould
Speaker 1: quite as much, not to mention artists of the moment.
Speaker 1: That meant Jay Z Snoop Dogg, Public Enemy, Drake, Griselda, Cardi,
Speaker 1: b Coila, Ray Coast, Contra, Jack Harlowe, Meek Mill, and
Speaker 1: all points in between. About five hours into the sourcing,
Speaker 1: it felt daunting, but with a window of possibility. About
Speaker 1: ten hours into the sourcing, I realized that the segment,
Speaker 1: whatever ended up being, had to have a time limit,
Speaker 1: and that this fact created a second fact, which was
Speaker 1: that I would have to demote some artists and cut
Speaker 1: others out. I would have to make the hard choices
Speaker 1: and play favorites. This whole thing, which had the potential
Speaker 1: to be a landmark event, could also result in angry
Speaker 1: faces in a ring around me. Wait, was I being
Speaker 1: set up for failure? Instantly I felt a twinge of
Speaker 1: regret of having said yes. In truth, it was an
Speaker 1: accumulated twinge. I had the previous March one an Oscar
Speaker 1: for directing Summer of Soul, a documentary about the Harlem
Speaker 1: cultural festival also known as Black Woodstock. I created the
Speaker 1: movie and a relatively calm atmosphere that was ironically enabled
Speaker 1: by the broad international crisis of pandemic. I was doing
Speaker 1: different things, living upstate, sketching on weekend mornings, getting further
Speaker 1: into meditation. But in the wake of the Oscar, I
Speaker 1: was also in demand. People were seeking me out to
Speaker 1: direct more movies. I said yes to one offer and
Speaker 1: yes to a second, and before I knew it, I
Speaker 1: was down for half a dozen commitments. I remember a
Speaker 1: conversation with my ex girlfriend, one of the last ones
Speaker 1: before we broke up. She was dismayed, you learned absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing in the last two years. She said. You told
Speaker 1: me that the less work you do and the more
Speaker 1: time you had to breathe, the more the stars aligned.
Speaker 1: You were working only on the things you wanted, and
Speaker 1: that felt good, right, I said, So, what's up with
Speaker 1: all this new work? She said, you basically just regressed.
Speaker 1: You relapsed the way a drug addict would pandemic was
Speaker 1: calm in a way, but when real life came back,
Speaker 1: you went right back to hiding in your work. She
Speaker 1: started to say something else, but stopped. What she said
Speaker 1: instead was devastating. I guess you'll have space and time
Speaker 1: for this relationship in like twenty thirty two. Then and
Speaker 1: there I told myself I would never again agree to
Speaker 1: do anything without taking time to assess it first, to
Speaker 1: see what the time management landscape looked like, to think
Speaker 1: about who other than myself might be affected. But she
Speaker 1: was right to tell me that I was wrong, and
Speaker 1: I was wrong to think that I would listen to myself.
Speaker 1: And here I was, having committed to a hip hop
Speaker 1: fifty Grammy tribute that had the potential to burn a
Speaker 1: bunch of bridges while I was standing on them. One
Speaker 1: of the bridges that it started to burn was the
Speaker 1: relationship itself. The twenty thirty two estimate now looked optimistic. Relationship,
Speaker 1: which had spanned the pandemic, started to end, and I
Speaker 1: did what she knew I'd do all along. I moved
Speaker 1: forward into more work. Specifically, I started on the Grammy
Speaker 1: Tribute project. I made a demo. I put together an
Speaker 1: audio map of the hip hop genre over the half
Speaker 1: century from nineteen seventy three, going from the earliest Bronx
Speaker 1: djaying to Jimmy Cast to Apache, and moving through all
Speaker 1: of it, every song and artists. I loved all the
Speaker 1: ones that I just mentioned, and all the ones I
Speaker 1: didn't until I got to Glorilla or Ice Spice, or
Speaker 1: whoever I thought best represented twenty twenty three. I made
Speaker 1: what I thought were all the hard choices. By the
Speaker 1: time I was finished, it was thirty three minutes and
Speaker 1: forty two seconds. I knew that the Grammys weren't going
Speaker 1: to give me that much time, but maybe I could
Speaker 1: get close. I called Jesse and Dion and asked them
Speaker 1: how long I would have. Ten minutes said maybe eleven.
Speaker 1: I thought they were joking. I was sure they were joking.
Speaker 1: How could anyone paar down the entire half century to
Speaker 1: a segment that short. On top of everything else, it
Speaker 1: will require me to deliver disappointment to artists, telling some
Speaker 1: I could only use the snippet of their greatest songs,
Speaker 1: telling others I couldn't use them at all. And what
Speaker 1: about the artists who are no longer sharp performers, or
Speaker 1: who I knew wouldn't be warmly received on TV or
Speaker 1: social media? Would I have to write them out of
Speaker 1: history entirely? That's when it hit me. They suckered me
Speaker 1: into being the back cop. Is that why y'all came
Speaker 1: to me to make me the back hop? They started laughing,
Speaker 1: but the laughing didn't last that long. These things that
Speaker 1: you're bringing up, they said, they sound like yps instead
Speaker 1: of ops, meaning your problem instead of are a problem.
Speaker 1: A day later, I called Dion back. I'd work with
Speaker 1: her on the Oscars when I was the de facto
Speaker 1: orchestra and quasi host. I gave her a level with
Speaker 1: me talk. Even though I'm a creative, I'm also a
Speaker 1: suit I said, So don't shield me like I'm an artist.
Speaker 1: Tell me the truth. How much time do I really have?
Speaker 1: Ten to eleven? She said? Come on, I said, you
Speaker 1: can tell me I am telling you. She said, there
Speaker 1: are other parts of the celebration. We're going to give
Speaker 1: doctor Dre an award. You have ten to eleven minutes
Speaker 1: for your segment. Jesse and Dion are the Ashford and
Speaker 1: Simpson of production. I know when to go to Dad
Speaker 1: for some things and Mom for some other things. I
Speaker 1: rolled out my appeal Dion, I said, I need you
Speaker 1: to come through for me. You gotta find me five
Speaker 1: more minutes. Can you give another segment a haircut? I'll
Speaker 1: see what I can do, she said. She called me
Speaker 1: back the next morning. I got good news, and you
Speaker 1: didn't say bad news. I said, I got you more time.
Speaker 1: She said, how much seventeen sixteen eighteen? You have thirteen minutes?
Speaker 1: She said. She delivered the news like she had gone
Speaker 1: out and gotten venison and was going to feed the
Speaker 1: household for a month. It was spoken in triumph and
Speaker 1: a kind of finality, and the wake of that call,
Speaker 1: I thought about reindeer games I always do is one
Speaker 1: of the metaphors I've used more than any other. The
Speaker 1: roots since our inception often felt that hip hop was
Speaker 1: a party, and we were invited late or not at all.
Speaker 1: We didn't get to participate in everything that it had
Speaker 1: to offer. Even though we have the talent and the desire,
Speaker 1: gatekeepers turned us away for one reason or another, not
Speaker 1: perceived as hard enough, not making the right kinds of
Speaker 1: hits at the right time. Being Rudolph came to be
Speaker 1: my skeleton key for everything in this situation. Though I
Speaker 1: wasn't Rudolph, I was Sanna. I was the gatekeeper. All right,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, Calm down, calmdown. That's it for now.
Speaker 1: If you really enjoy what you heard, you can go
Speaker 1: to questlove dot com, q U E s T l
Speaker 1: o v e dot com in order your copy of
Speaker 1: Hip Hop Is History Today. Thank you,