The New Yorker Radio Hour - Black Thought Takes the Stage

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

Tariq Trotter, best known in music as Black Thought, the emcee of the Roots, is regarded by many hip-hop fans as one of the best freestyle rappers ever. His work changed shape when the Roots became the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show, and again when he began performing standup comedy. “I’ve spent most of my career with my sunglasses and my hat pulled down low, very many layers of defense,” he tells Jelani Cobb. “You’re up there as a comedian, it’s just you and your ideas and a microphone, no light show, no band. . . . After having done this for over thirty years, what else can I do, how can I become a better storyteller?” Trotter’s latest endeavor has been writing the music and lyrics for “Black No More,” a musical-theatre production based on the eponymous novel, by George Schuyler;  the script is by John Ridley, with direction by Scott Elliott. Schuyler’s book is a dark satire, written during the Harlem Renaissance, that describes the development of a “cure” for Blackness; Trotter stars as Dr. Junius Crookman, who believes that this remedy will solve America’s problems with race. “My focus became almost rapping as little as possible” in the show, Trotter says; “I wanted this to be above and beyond folks’ expectations.”  “Black No More” is in previews at the Pershing Square Signature Center. It opens February 15th. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The MC. Tarek Trotter, who's known in music as Black Thought, is considered by many to be one of the best rappers of all time. And you probably know his work with The Roots, the long-running hip-hop collective, that's been the house band for Jimmy Fallon for more than a decade. Please welcome from the legendary Roots crew, a multiple... Rami Award winner, Tarek Trotter, aka Black Thoughts. Yeah, team metaphor in the house. Thank you so much.

I love having you on this side, man. Yeah, me too. You know, it's cool. One step closer to behind the desk. Outside of his long career with the roots, Trotter has also worked as an actor. Lately, he's been performing comedy, too, and he's just made his theatrical debut in Black No More.

I heard a doctor preaching about a science that could turn black-white without the bleaching. What doctor? What are you thinking? That which must have you sinking into some insane. Trotter wrote most of the music and lyrics and the book is by John Ridley. The show is based on a satirical novel

of the Harlem Renaissance that dates from 1931. Trotter stars as a doctor who invents a treatment to make black people look white. Let me hear someone say killing, no lives are at risk. Need I remind you how many years for which I've been in practice before this scientific breakthrough,

please allow me to reshape and awake you. Allow me to take and remake you. Go ahead, thank you. I'll charge him in half yard for a tone so pure. You'll be black no more and back for an encore. Staff writer Jelani Cobb spoke with Torek Trotter in the lobby of the theater just before rehearsal. How do you think of yourself in the rare event

that you might have to go someplace and people don't know who you are? How do you introduce yourself? I always introduce myself as Tariq You know, that's all I'm uh I think it's weird You know

Hi I'm Black Thought I think it's Yeah no I mean you know People make choices And it's cool If you if you You know go buy your moniker or whatever

But yeah for me I've always sort of Separated Church and State in that way So how did the name Black Thought which is I think one of the more indelible in hip hop. How did that name come about? Originally, I had a bunch of nicknames

that have to do with, you know, just my skin tone. You know what I mean? Some would hurt my feelings when I was a young person. Some not so much. You know, when I lived in UK for a while, my friends referred to me as a blacker. You know, when I was a little guy in South Philly,

Sometimes I ran with some Puerto Rican kids and they would call me Black Boy Roy. But yeah, there was always like, you know, just a blackness associated with how I referred to myself. I grew up as a visual artist, painting. And I went to the high school for creative and performing arts, which is where the roots began. And just as a visual artist there, sometimes using my palette, trying to come up with different shades or different dark tones of black or something close to blackness, I would have to use almost every color in the palette. I rip the vocal back flip yo, the kid is a bad bro. I could lip so, IDOs amico, which means I got stichio, makes you wonder about my number guess my address on my pio.

Here's a hint. I'm from pillow with a dope but not the Rio. And that, you know, sort of, you know, it resonated with me as one of the parallels of of my style. You know, definitely at the time, too. I was sort of throwing everything against the wall to see what stuck, and I would do, you know, dance hall stuff, and I would sing a little bit.

I would do one song where I sound more like Chuck D or, you know, someone who would be associated with a public enemy, and then the next song would be like more, you know, juice crew. You know what I mean? So I just had all these different, you know, tones of style. You mentioned that you started out as a visual artist.

You did sculpture, you did painting. How did rap come to be, rapping, come to be the preeminent forum for your art? For me, I was born in 1973 in October, arguably two months after hip-hop was born. So we grew up as one. That was sort of all I knew. And everyone that I knew knew. I come from an era where, you know, we embraced the culture in its entirety. So I, you know, was a rapper.

I was a B-boy. I was a graffiti artist. I was, you know, a DJ. I was a human beatbox. You know, everything that came with it was a part of my life. But throughout, you know, I was always a visual artist because that's what my, your mother has sort of, you know, stared me towards. She sent me to art school and whenever she could afford art classes on a Saturday or there was an art camp that was associated with the city of Philadelphia that you could do during the summer. So just to keep me from sitting idly by 11 or 12 in the afternoon when some of my other friends would be just waking up and getting outside for the day, I would be coming back from taking art class.

One of the things I think that stands out about your work and your lyricism in particular is just how many literary references and illusions there are. It's almost like finding your way through a card catalog and the names of albums. Things Fall Apart, which is also the title of a novel by Chenhua Chebe and The Tipping Point, which is also a book by my colleague Malcolm Gladwell, on streams of thought, volume one, you have a song titled Dostoevsky. Oh, right. Written without a ghost writer, the author it for me. This is crime and punishment. I'm the judging and jury.

Listen, Dostoevsky. And so I wondered how that got started in, you know, what role literature has played in influencing your art. I feel like the arts has always come to me more naturally. And, you know, once I realized that something that I could say in the song might inspire someone else to, you know, want to do more research or, you know, want to sort of dig beyond that song to get a better understanding of, you know, what made me make that reference. Then it became like a benchmark, you know what I mean? I think Killer Priest from Bhutan Klan once said that too much knowledge could break up. the rhyme, which is very true.

You know, it's easy to come off as preachy or teachy and, you know, to have the listener begin to shut down. It's just a delicate balance. Yeah. That's Tarek Trotter, also known as Black Thought, speaking

with Jelani Kyle. More in a moment. So your last studio album with The Roots was 2014. Is there anything in the works with you all now? Yeah, you know, we've been working on the new Roots album since then. And yeah, I feel like we could have put, we could have put out, you know, a few at this point just because of the way, you know, we work. We sort of overindulge in the studio and like in the process.

And I've come to appreciate just the feeling, the power that lies within having the content sort of done and then doing some more. You know what I mean? So I never want to be, you know, presented with, okay. it's time to do an album or it's time to work on this thing and now I have to figure out what I'm going to do so once I got ahead of the curve a little bit I've been really conscious to sort of stay there so I got you know like my next eight albums are in my phone right now but and then you know the roots album because we're a collective once we're all really once Quest Love and I agree that the album is done then it's done but you know

It could be done tomorrow if we needed to be. In 2017, the end of 2017, you dropped a 10-minute freestyle on Funkmaster Flex's show, which people thought of it as a kind of astounding example of freestyle rapping. Can you tell me about how that came about? It was, I think, on a Thursday, if I'm not mistaken, whatever day it was, we had done two, we had recorded two tonight shows. So I was pretty tired. It was cold.

It was the dead of winter. So I hit Flex up and told him I was going to come through. I'm sorry for your loss. It's somebody dead in the car and it's probably one of yours. They're writing all across the window in the walls. Whether it was true or false, we shouldn't have got involved. Remember, we walked past the teacher take the chalk and laugh. We wrote punishments.

I will not talk in class. Now it's pistols punishing people for talking fast. And all these innocent bystanders is hauling ass. I hate to say I told y'all, but I told y'all things fall apart when it's too weak to hold y'all. I'm just collecting what you. You old to my old John. You're about to get swooped down.

Did the reaction surprise you? I was a little surprised by the reaction because I didn't do anything differently than I've always done. I didn't say, hey, I'm going to rap for nine or ten minutes, and I'm going to say all these things. I just went to sort of do what I do. And it took place during the time where what it is that I do and what I grew up doing was far less common. And, you know, just felt more alien and reminded people, oh, shit. Like, this is, you know, how you really do it. So in terms of performance, is it different?

I mean, you have been on a stage for the majority of your life at this point. Is it different performing in the musical context than it is in the theatrical context? You know, what has it been like thus far going up on stage and doing the play? It's very different when I'm rapping at a rap show or, you know, if I'm at, I don't know if I'm performing with orchestra from performing at you know Lincoln Sitter Carnegie Hall it's always about um the movement I'm you know speaking a lot more with my hands with my body I'm moving around I'm making eye contact with a lot of lots of uh you know the folks in the audience and uh here or at least with black no more it's more uh about a stillness you know so it's not to distract not to take away from you know

what's being said. I've had to learn to just be more still and to engage with the audience in a different way. But, you know, when you get a laugh or a gas or an applause, it works in the same way that it does or that it would

on stage doing comedy or on stage, you know, with the roots. Because you do comedy also. I do. Yeah, I mean, broccoli Robb, it's like, it's the only broccoli that's bitter for no reason. It's like, Come on, man. Way to bring the room down, Rob. I mean, like, think about it.

All the other broccoli is good, right? Like the little baby brocolini. Little organic broccoli. It tastes. It's almost sweet. All the cousins, cauliflower. They're having a moment right now. They're good. They are having a moment, right?

Even the OG broccoli with the Afro. It's good. But then Rob is just, like, bitter for no reason. I'm like, you can tell whenever all the broccoli family gets together, they're like, if Rob, calls. I'm not here. You're up there as a comedian. You're sort of on your own.

It's just you and your ideas and a microphone and, you know, no light show and no band. And, you know, so it's something that I began to, you know, just make myself more comfortable with being vulnerable in that way on stage. You know what I'm saying? I spent most of my career, you know, wearing sunglasses and with my hat pulled down,

low and you know we're just with very many layers of almost defense you know after having done this for over 30 years it's like what else can I do you know how can I become better how can I become a better storyteller a better performer and I arrived at just to become more personal more personal more personable um you know it's been, you know, definitely, you know, a cathartic sort of exercise for me. You tell me, how did your involvement with Black No More come about? My involvement with Black No More came about maybe six or seven years ago now. When it was, you know, an opportunity was presented to, you know, to me, well, really to the roots as a collective to create some music that would, you know, potentially be associated with theatrical,

interpretation of the book Black No More. And, you know, John Ridley, who I think have been thinking about this project for quite some time, he clicked up with Scott Elliott and decided that it might be a cool idea to try and, you know, step into the realm of theater. John Ridley is a TV film person. That's his background. And Scott Elliott, you know, had more experience in the realm of theater. and the roots, you know, we make music.

So it was definitely, it made sense as a trifecta. So, yeah, it wound up, you know, as one of those projects that just landed in my lap because I was able to sort of carve out enough time to do it. Over time, my focus became almost rapping as little as possible. You know, I wanted this to be more above and beyond folks' expectations. You know, oh, wow, Black Thought from the Roots. He's done this musical.

I'm sure it's going to be, you know, super lyrical. And, you know, I mean, everyone's going to be rapping their ass off. But when you come in and, you know, then you realize that, you know, I've written love songs and duets and, you know, power ballads and, you know, country western ditties and, you know, stuff that's, you know, more associated with classical musical theater. I think it's just a pleasant surprise. It's like, oh, wow, it speaks to my talents as a force to be reckoned with in a different way.

It's a range of creative work. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I have a broader question, which is, you know, that hip-hop in particular, but entertainment in general is punishing. It doesn't, is not known for giving people opportunities for reinvention. and longevity is not a given. And so I wonder what it means to you to be connected to an art form from childhood

and to now have reached the age that you've reached and to still be thriving, to still be performing, to still be able to break new creative ground and the work that you're doing. It's a blessing for me. It's something that I do. definitely don't take, you know, for granted. And I'm just very grateful. Those same, you know,

limitations, I mean, they go beyond hip-hop. Those limitations, you know, and that sort of limited expectation of the limited range of expectation is placed on us as a people. You know what I mean? You know, as a culture, as, you know, just a black man, as a black person. and when I was a young person lots of my friends and family didn't make it to the age of 20 let alone 30 or 40 or 50 it was something that I just couldn't foresee

so yeah I feel like I'm an anomaly and almost an exception in many ways that I've made it as far as I have but that said I still feel like this so very far to go. There's still many rivers to cross. I've never felt this, though,

oh, I've arrived. You know what I mean? But, you know, that said, I'm still very thankful to be wherever it is that I am. The rapper Tarek Trotter, also known as Black Thought. He spoke with Jolani Cobb, staff writer at The New Yorker.

Black No More is in previews, and it opens this month. I'm David Remnick. That's our pro. program for today. Hope you enjoyed the show and see you next time.