Song Exploder - The Roots - It Ain't Fair (feat. Bilal)

Episode Date: January 3, 2018

Drummer Ahmir Thompson, also known as Questlove, and rapper Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, started The Roots when they were in high school in Philadelphia in 1987. Over the last thirty years, the band has released 17 albums. They’ve received a bunch Grammy nominations including  three wins. They’re also the house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. In this episode, Questlove tells the story of how they made the song "It Ain’t Fair." It was created for the film Detroit, directed by oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow, who also made the films The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty. Detroit is about the 1967 Detroit riots, centered around the events at the Algiers Motel, where police killed three young black men and beat and tortured nine others. The Roots recruited the singer Bilal to contribute vocals to the song, and they worked with The Dap-Kings, the backing band for the late soul singer Sharon Jones, to create a sound that evoked the music of 1967. songexploder.net/the-roots

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway. This episode contains explicit language. Drummer Amir Thompson, also known as Questlove, and rapper Tareke Trotter, aka Black Thought, started the roots when they were in high school, in Philadelphia, in 1987. Over the last 30 years, the bands released 17 albums. They've received a bunch of Grammy nominations, including three wins. They're also the house band for The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon. In this episode, Questlove tells the story of how they wrote and recorded the song It Ain't Fair.

It was created for the film Detroit, directed by Oscar winner Catherine Bigelow, who also made the films The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark 30. Detroit is about the 1967 Detroit riots. It centers around the events at the Algiers Motel, where police killed three young black men and beat and tortured nine others. The roots recruited singer Bilal to contribute vocals to the song, and they worked with the Dap Kings, the backing band for the late soul singer Sharon Jones, to help them create a sound that evoked the music of 1967.

I recorded this interview with Questlove at 30 Rockefeller Center in between tapings of The Tonight Show. This is Amir Khalib Thompson, P.K.A. Questlove of the legendary Roots crew and co-author of It Ain Fair by The Roots and Blau. The origin of this song was, one of my managers there, I was just like, Catherine Bigelow's going to call him five minutes. I was like, okay, fine.

But inside I was like, uh-huh, you know? I took the phone call, being a very, very big fan of Catherine Bigelow's work, not knowing what to expect. And she called me around March and said, hey, I have a movie, and I think it's perfect for you guys to submit a song. She's like, I just want to set a screening, and I want you to watch it. And then I'm going to call you back, in a couple of days.

I think she said I'll let you simmer in it or let you ponder it. When I heard that, I thought, wait a minute. Detroit riots, Catherine Bigelow's cinema style. Oh, God, this is going to be something crazy. I was working security by Wisconsin. And on Tuesday night, we had a gunfire coming from the area near the Algiers. Police was there. There was a lot of shooting.

When I went in there, three kids have been killed. The movie absolutely devastated me. Not to mention, she showed it to me like 10 days after the Philandro Castile situation in Minnesota was going on. So it's like all of those things were dancing in my head. I'm just sitting there. Tears are well enough, but I'm like bathed in anger. Like I just sat there. Like, how in the hell am I supposed to make sense of what I saw?

We got on the phone three days later. And she's like, so how do you feel? And my exact quote, part of my French, was, I'm mad as fuck. She said, good. Now where's my song? The best political storyteller that I know, at least for soul music, in my mind was Curtis Mayfield. And there was a song on his very first solo record called The Other Side of Town. And it was like a roller coaster.

The slow parts were slow and menacing. And then the fast part was intense. and fired up and angry and the other side of town was part of the blueprint in my head for the song. I'm from the other side of town out of balance.

And I thought, okay, I need a song that feels like a roller coaster to be quiet and cold at moments and to slowly rise up to a boiling point. Last year for Christmas, someone gave me one of those ironic cassette players from Urban Outfitters and a bunch of blank cassettes

so I had to wait till I got home I got home and got my cassette player and just kept humming that sort of thing. All right. We come the fall of bull and be like Curtis. Because our fish is in the air. Doong do do do do do do do do do do do

do have a do do do do do do All right, so that's the courteous part. I told Catherine that it'll take maybe eight minutes for us to get this out our system. And I felt some sort of way of telling her that, like, okay, this song has now become about how do I make myself feel a relief from what I just saw? I was struggling with who could write the lyrics for the song. And I had a wish list of everybody that I thought of. I've had some screenings for some of these songwriters,

and I have to say that it was very unsuccessful. So I was struggling there, and Tariq was sort of like, and I was like, what? And he's like, I'll do it. You do what? It's like, I'll write the lyrics. I never once thought that Tariq could handle that task. It's funny, like, I live for the roots being underestimated,

but, yeah, leave it to me to underestimate. to make my own group's powers, and sure enough, his first draft was excellent, but it was narrative-specific. He basically told the synopsis of the movie in the song, which was cool, but then it sounded like we were specifically trying to be 1967. So I say, if there's a way that you could really express emotion without giving specific narration of characters or places, people, things, that sort of thing. And he said, oh, way to have you. I'll have it.

And came back like 19 minutes later, like, whew! And I was like, oh, God, you nailed it. Oh, brother. Hey, my name is Bilal. It's still a mystery. Yeah, yeah. I got a phone call from my mirror. He told me that he wanted me to come up in a demo, a song for a movie.

I told Bilal, I need you to start off as silky smooth, as some of the great falsetto singers. My idea was to start off as silent as a lamb, so that way you can process what you just saw. Will you hear my cry? Won't you hear you? And by the end, I need you to see with fire and brimstone like a Baptist preacher. When you're protector, it's your predator. It ain't fair. Nah, it ain't fair.

Nah, it ain't fair. Balau, to me, I don't call him a singer. I think he's beyond that. I will say that Balau is performance art. Because the well is running dry, racial tension's running high. Under 21 is far too young to die. My salvation's under fire.

This rising and rise in it. He's one of my favorite singers ever to work with. I've been working with him for 20 years. He's not a household name. Your favorites, favorites, know about Bilau, and they know how frightening good he is. Like, every time you watch him, it's like watching the song all over again.

He's that type of performer. If you listen to Bilow's last 20 seconds, I mean, the engineer is totally against me doing this. I said, look, well, I need him to sing as intense is he does in concert, and a lot of times, he'll just grab the microphone. Like, it's one thing to do just a standard studio setup microphone where you're not allowed to touch the microphone

because of, you know, rules. But I said, I just need him to give me a take where he's treating this song like he does in concert. You know, certain songs, you know, it gets really emotional for me. I try to put my whole being into a piece, you know, especially a piece like that. Just lyrics alone kind of channel me into a certain.

certain place where I'm not really in control. At the very end of the song, I think he kicks the microphone stand to the floor, much to the engineer's chagrin. No, it ain't fair. John Williams was an inspiration. I knew that whatever Tariq was going to rhyme over, I wanted it to feel like Indiana Jones. Whatever the feeling is of Indiana Jones swinging on a vine and.

Sort of that John Williams. I wanted a fanfareish trumpet feeling, but what would a minor Indiana Jones sound like? So in my head, I kept just singing like, I just kept singing like, I just kept singing that all day. I just kept singing that all day. At the Tonight Show, we are fortunate enough

to have the presence of some of the Dap King, as our horn section. And so we brought in all seven members of the Dap Kings to play the horn parts. Two trombone players, two trumpet players, three saxophones, and one sousaphone player. I also knew that I didn't want to drum a straight-ahead drum with him. Pt, got, b-boo-p-cah!

For Tarek's rhyming part, partially because I figured in 1967 that genre wasn't, quote-unquote invented yet. So I spent a good hour at 30 Rock after we shot the Tonight Show. Trying to figure out how to do a drum roll for Tariq's verse. And plus, I guess I wanted the challenge of giving Tariq a backdrop that had no obvious rhythm to it. The John Williams fanfare with a rolling drum backdrop, which then forced him to compact a

his words because he'll cater his rhymes to whatever rhythmic backdrop we give him. They took it from the human race to a tame chase, the devil feeding off hate so we gain weight. It's tainted water's in the well so we can't taste. People dazed in the maze, though it ain't grace. Impossible to coexist in the same space into the black saint with the war paint face. And I was pondering like where to record the song. I knew that the Dap King guys kind of had the perfect studio to execute the idea that Dap Tone Studios is tailor-made for this type of project. The only problem is it's like

dealing with like seven tracks and so it's how do you squeeze a 10 member band and two vocalists and an additional nine horns and eight strings on seven tracks. We've recorded to tape. We use no overdubs and just had to get the perfect performance. So a lot of it was doing a take, and then the engineer realizing that the guitar is like bleeding very loud on the bass track, so we've got to move you just an inch or. Okay, guys, give us another eight-minute take, and you've got to do a complete take like your heart depends on it. In total, we had to play this eight-minute song 17-18 times in a row, which is nerve-wracking.

It's the hardest route song we have very. ever had to do. And we made 17 records. You know what I mean? But it requires a lot of discipline. The funniest part of this at all was me telling the guys that I want you to sound like amateurs. This is what will make it sound authentic. Because we have an advantage that our contemporaries back in the 50s and 60s didn't have. I mean, we're a generation that went to elementary school for performing arts, high school for performing arts. We went to college for performing arts. We practice. We're beyond that Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hour practice thing. We're up in like the 60,000 hours. And what's weird about it is that there are a lot of wrong, what we call

church tones that lesser experienced musicians might play because they don't know the proper chord to go to to make the song sound correct. But because it's soul music, it just sounds more perfect and correct. So it's where me telling our bass player, Mark Kelly, like, I want you to play as many incorrect notes as possible. Matter of fact, I also want you to detune your bass a little bit and play slightly sharp. Detune the bass so that it sounds like you're an amateur. To be in this band, it takes a lot of sacrificing your vanity.

You gotta give what the song calls for. Pretend your musician in 67. You work at a factory 70 hours a week. You might get that one Saturday night off where you and your buddies go play in a blues band down the street. You know, you grab the bass out the basement and you're playing a lot of incorrect notes. That's how I want you to play.

And so we had to do a lot of unlearning the song just to get the right feel for it. I feel personally that Hollywood really isn't ready to open up the Pandora's box that is Black Pain. and a lot of our existence is dealing with how to suppress those feelings so that they don't come out. Were you worried that Catherine Bigelow wouldn't understand? I don't know if any white person can really understand the level and the depth of black paint. But what was important was that she gave us a platform to express it.

And now here's It Ain't Fair by The Roots featuring Bilal in its entirety. It's still a mystery Yeah Will you hear my cry Because I'll never know I'll never know To They walk but they're walking in their sleep

I pray the Lord their souls to keep Because wolves the skies That sheep patrol our streets And we all know that with you so you shall reap. Those who do know you should teach through every loophole, we're gonna leap until we reach a common ground because when your hometown becomes a battleground, tears weighing down,

because it ain't fair for love and it ain't there trying to meet with the mother. with a long boy it ain't clear detention and running actions on the fire guess a nigger got a laugh to keep front crime tonight another friend

passed on a young side it's bad because a good friend's hard to come by justice is never colorblind never gunshot for one crime you may never see the sunshine we know it one time giving you the figure around hearing me fuck you

it's not the number one sign I hear they turn in downtown to the front line it's something like the same place but it ain't safe they took it from the human race to a tank chase the devil feed laws hate so we gained weight it's tainting waters in the well so we can't chase people dazed in the maze though it ain't braced impossible to coexist in the same space into a black safe with the war paint face generation, we've forsaken all that's real. What emotions do is your poison called a pistol or a pill? Some people say, let Jesus take the will. Others say, thou shalt not kill.

But that old time religion ain't going to come so far yet here. Presumed inferior. American Mexicans invested in wrestling with Willie Lynch is next to kin. the tired noose around the next again. Look how they try to hide proof of all of excellence. The only tag, you know me as, is holy swag. Through any glass, when don't we smash and brody bags? It's coming fast.

I'm unabashed. So we have. It'll win. It's set a only flag that's growing fast. I guess I'm trying to minimize regrets. I identify with death. That don't mean it's not an uninvited guess. I'm just trying to answer all of my requests.

It's expressed. In 140 characters are less like I'm the best. Educated, Relentislated, premeditated, dedicated. Heavyweight that ever baited with blood Not tuition without a copse, permission I gotta buy the pissing despite the opposite. More, visit SongExploder.net, where you'll also find a link to buy the song,

It Ain't Fair. And if you miss Detroit in the theaters, you can now rent it or buy it. Song Exploder is produced by me, along with Christian Coons, with help from intern Olivia Wood. Carlos Lerma creates original illustrations for each episode of the podcast,

which you can see on our website. Special thanks this episode to Daedalus for his help. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists.

And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. The features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuckus, Josh Malina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jen, Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now.

You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Next time on Song Exploder, Julian Baker. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of creative, independent podcasts, made possible by listeners like you.

Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. If you want to share your thoughts on this episode, you can find Song Exploder on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Song Exploder. My name is Rishi Keshe Your Way. Thanks for listening.