MO' META Blues Part 23

3. It's not a mystery why the crowd stood up. Imagine listening to a bunch of abstract music or old-a.s.s f.u.c.king boppers and then a band comes in with youthful energy. Plus, Scott didn't know how to do a solo, so he would just string together thirty f.u.c.king pop songs, which at least gave them melodies they knew. The people there had probably been at that festival for a number of days and here you come playing actual pop music. It's like Stanley Crouch said when he turned his back on the avant-garde: People say they like that s.h.i.+t, but n.o.body gets off their feet until they play 4/4.

4. I don't know what parade you were at, holmes, but that float was a bier. Triumphantly returning from Germany's Moers Festival, n.i.g.g.as saw nothing but halcyon days ahead. What we got instead was straight Sturm und Drang. As the fanfare of Dusseldorf faded, all that remained was this troupe of unemployed negroes with heightened expectations (too heightened) and a black cover demo in CD format. I had worked with a bunch of rap acts before (remember) and now I was beginning to experience a dreadful deja vu. You know: the loop of the also-ran, the point where a young artist's expectations outpace their youthful enthusiasm and a manager's finances. During the summer of 1993 Organix was, at best, a pictureless curio floating around the bottom of industry A&R bins. It may have made sense to sell at a European jazz festival, but back in the United States it got lost in translation. It was swag deficient, lacking the grit of sample, microchip, and identifiable urban narrative that, to this day, define the genre. It was who you guys were and everything you weren't and so there were no takers, just diminuendo in freefall. Then, a little interest from Bill Stephany's smallish imprint, and even though he pa.s.sed one of his reps told Kenyatta, who was the Mercury A&R head, about this demo "which was actually on CD" (novel right?). Bell got my number and called about a potential licensing deal. I feigned disinterest, telling him that we were looking for an actual deal and not trying to just put our demo out. He led with $40K, stall tactics got him to $80K, and word spread to East West's Merlin Bob. Then Epic called and Kenyatta arranged a showcase for Ed Eckstein. You n.i.g.g.as brought your hunger game that night. I knew it was in the bag when half way through the performance I saw Ed mouth "sign them" to Kenyatta. The next day they had me come to the office to work out the details. Lisa Cortes, the VP or A&R, started at $160,000 and ended at $200,000, which was the biggest deal for a Philly rap outfit... ever. Crescendo: we had arrived... or so I thought. But then came Geffen. Based on the success of Arrested Development the year before, Geffen chairman Eddie Rosenblatt hired Wendy Goldstein away from Elecktra for the express purpose of signing a rap act "that played their own instruments and didn't talk about guns." Fran Spiro, from Rush Management, told Wendy she had just the group for her but that "they were in the midst of a bidding war" and she would "have to go big or go home." When I got a call from our lawyer Brad Rubens about Geffen's interest it seemed more than a bit odd. With literally zero n.i.g.g.as on their artist roster, it was a label Daniel F. Malan could be proud of, but yet they beckoned. For the most part, we granted this eleventh-hour look on a lark. I told them to bring Wendy to our rehearsal studio for a run of show. She was scheduled to come through one Sat.u.r.day in October but was running late. Tariq had to leave and then everyone else did, too, and I could see that she was thrown off when I told her that the band was gone and had no plans of returning. I was sure that the Geffen thought experiment was dead as soon as "no plans of returning" rolled off my tongue, but Wendy regrouped and said she would come back the next day. The next day you guys were in rare form. Midway through, I remember thinking to myself, Yeah, these are the best motherf.u.c.kers I've ever worked with. Wendy was wowed as well. She asked what would it take to get the deal done, and we gave her our go big number. She got back to us some days later with some game-changing s.h.i.+t. Not only had she got Geffen up to our number, but she dropped another $50,000 on top. We were ecstatic but humbled-it was like n.i.g.g.as were actually waiting for Lena Horne to pop up and sing "Believe in Yourself." There was one downside (at least for me): I was going to have to give the what's up to Lisa Cortes at Mercury. When I got there, she was all big-momma smiling and welcome-to-your-new-home-ing, and then I hit her with the bad-news bear. She looked stunned. She told me it was a mistake. She was a second away from saying "David Geffen doesn't like black people." Instead, she poignantly asked, "Are they going to take racial sensitivity cla.s.ses?" I got stuck for a bit, I really did know what she meant-there was a sense of an apartheid roster thing popping over there-and I had mixed feelings about turning my back on the Mercury guys, all of whom were black. But, with visions of Nevermind in my head, I thought those thoughts, told her I appreciated where she was coming from, and left. Okay back to the floats.

5. Let's not mince words: by the time we got to the end of making that record, we were broke. The record deal money was gone. The label gave us a rental car, and we were supposed to return it after a week but we kept that s.h.i.+t for four months. By the time we gave it back there had been blizzards and there was salt all over it, not to mention a dent from hitting a pole. We used to ask Geffen for free records. We would fill up duffel bags and take them back and sell them in Philly just to stay above water. We were selling-CDs-from-a-duffel-bag broke.

6. We were in the f.u.c.king hotel on a credit card, and the manager didn't have the technology to check it to see if it was at its credit limit, which it was. Everyone pretended that everything was fine. We rode that no-good card as long as we could, and that s.h.i.+t ran out just as Galliano appeared. I don't know what we would have done otherwise.

7. In the lounge area at the House of Roots, there were these little tealight candles in aluminum cups. We had to keep grabbing them because they were shaking off the table. It was an echo chamber of pure ba.s.s. I think part of that effect isn't even about the music. Some of that s.h.i.+t really is just physiology. There's a certain frequency that will definitely affect you. It's not imaginary or even cultural. It's physical. In the past, if humans felt something that deep, it was a stampede or an earthquake. These days, you feel it, and maybe it takes a second before you realize that you're not about to be killed, but you've been triggered, and off you go.

8. I don't think early on you guys realized how little pop sense you had. Note to y'all: the Zeitgeist ain't a f.u.c.kin' bicycle built for two. I remember one time during an interview Tariq said, "This is a collective of people any one of which could have a platinum alb.u.m." At that point I wanted to ask, "And do chickens got negroid lips?" Hubris is such a slippery slope. When I get a whiff I'm inclined to pull out Occam's Razor and hack my way through a n.i.g.g.a's loftiness. While you don't want to demoralize the artist or offhandedly denigrate their vision, it's simply irresponsible not to manage expectations. I was a Marxist during my college years (right??) and the dialectic approach stuck. As for wishful thinking, well, that's that s.h.i.+t I don't like. So, no pop sound scanning, just the long marched plop of one foot in front of the other.

9. I've said it before and I'll say it again: 1994 was a horrific f.u.c.king year. Still, we were happy with what we had. I remember doing fifty-dollar gigs and everyone getting a fiver and being cool with it. You went off and bought a T-s.h.i.+rt or someone scored some weed and tried to make it with a girl. It really was a simpler, even happier time, even though it sucked.

10. Remember that? Dude had a motorcycle jacket and a f.u.c.king theremin.

11. That was a f.u.c.king great show. It just had an unexpectedness to it that kept everyone focused. But you guys were always a special band live. The Rahzel show was one version of what was always the case: there was a karaoke element, you know? Much of your act was literally playing other people's. .h.i.ts, like a jukebox. And there were these amazing moments when you, Ahmir, would play these breaks. People were used to hip-hop as found sounds and recontextualized s.h.i.+t. There was no experience of seeing it that big, live. It was like an old-school Top 40 band on steroids.

12. Before that, hip-hop had a sense of belonging. When Run DMC did "My Adidas," you could go out and get a pair of Adidas. You could put on jeans and a Kangol hat. You could be part of that club. When motherf.u.c.kers are talking about buying a jet or a speedboat, well, that's not inclusive. And think of where the videos are set. Early on there was lots of on-your-block s.h.i.+t, videos with regular locations: street corners, houses, empty lots. People could identify with that in ways they couldn't identify with mansions.

13. Dude, this doesn't have s.h.i.+t to do with Biggie, but I remember how the cops in Paris would come at you if they thought you were African and then, once they saw you were American, let you go. That was routine. Once, maybe around 1999, 2000, I was walking down the street. The cops drove past on the sidewalk and then backed up and ran up to me. I pulled my pa.s.sport out, but this motherf.u.c.ker stuck his hand in my pocket. I had a teeny bit of weed in there, which he found, and then he handcuffed me and drove me down to the precinct. I had dreads and people were shouting at me as I went in: "Bob Mar-lee! Bob Mar-lee!"

14. Listen, man. The other day I heard that new 2 Chainz record, and it's a f.u.c.king object lesson in thematic narrowness, one dumba.s.s idea repeated over and over again. There's a song called "Crack" and then a song called "Dope Peddler," right next to each other. Then a little later there's a song called "I Luv Dem Strippers." I'm not knocking 2 Chainz. But what kind of market elevates a guy like that, to the exclusion of everything else? That's the thing these days: there's no diversity in winning.

15. I love "Double Trouble." It's a masterpiece of sorts. But no one really gives a s.h.i.+t about that song, you know? There's lots of great weirdness on that alb.u.m but most of its reputation rests on the few big singles.

16. Opinions in the band may differ. There were always enough girls for Tariq, that's for d.a.m.n sure. But yeah, there weren't so many girls that you didn't have to be proactive.

17. It's not just that, Ahmir. It's a question of how arty you're allowed to be when you're black. Take Dirty Projectors. I like that record. It's not like everybody in the world is talking about it, but they respect it and it sells 37,000 copies. I can't really think of black artists who sell so little and maintain a level of respect. For reasons that are part of history, the black middle cla.s.s is not necessarily full of that kind of art-oriented thinking. They need for things to have concrete, readily apparent success.

18. I remember an interview with a writer who was in college during the Black Power movement, at an Ivy League school, I think. He said that the first time he heard the slogan "Black Is Beautiful," he felt completely empowered. Then an hour later he felt paranoid, wondering if he was black enough, if he was included in this new beautiful cla.s.s. Hip-hop groups, even if they were smart, still wanted to have an air of black cool. Hip-hop was a simulacrum of black cool. And I don't really believe in black cool. I believe in it as a psychological device, as in having some emotional distance from things you can't control. From the outside that seems cool. And so I think middle-cla.s.s blacks felt like these hip-hop motherf.u.c.kers were more authentically black than they were.

19. Listen, any critic has to do that, because what is at the heart of liking something? Say you like cla.s.sical music. Or say you like cla.s.sical music and traditional Chinese music and music from the Caribbean and black soul and hardcore punk and cla.s.sic rock. Each of those genres has a certain history, so people feel it's not enough just to like them: they have to figure out who it appeals to, what are the active elements that spur on the people who listen to it. So white critics study the people who appreciate hip-hop, and they don't want to champion hip-hop that isn't respected. The same goes for a hip-hop artist trying to establish his bona fides as an indie-rock fan.

20. I think Jay-Z's interest in the band came from the fact that he got to a point where he had to reinvent himself. He had been paying attention to the Grammy Awards and the critical acclaim, to this sense that you guys were some impressive s.h.i.+t as a live band, and he reached out as a way of nuancing his own brand. It was simpatico, game-recognize-game: it fit his overall vision of where he was going.

21. Let's face it-Phrenology (by design, and mostly out of necessity) was a mishmash. It was a reification of your state-of-the-minute (post D-tour) musical leanings grafted onto Tariq's recalcitrant line in the sand Masterpiece Theatre (which, may I remind you, was itself a project he started because you went Michael Eugene Archering yellow-brick-road-style). It was a messy, circling-the-drain type of affair that ultimately revealed its own pretzel logic. But I guess good s.h.i.+t come to those who "weight," or maybe Cracker Jacklike prizes can be found after things fall apart.

22. Really? You remember being in New York for that? I remember it being in L.A., and I remember that you were the one who was late rather than Cody. Sometimes one universe can split into two alternate realities. Or maybe one of us is just wrong.

23. Like I said, Phrenology was collage, a cut-and-pasty thing that many previous fans found "discomfort" in. They were like, "What the f.u.c.k are you doing? You have this punk thing and this R&B thing. Who the f.u.c.k are you guys?" Our core fans were a center that would not hold, but critics seemed to favor the alb.u.m's direction. So I figured that while our Teflon exterior was somewhat cracked it was still very much nonstick. Unfortunately for us, those cracks were fault lines, and we were headed for the Tipping Point.

24. It's been said that dudes celebrate the spirit of men and the bodies of women-and there we went, fact-checking the aphoristic. We were pastime patriarchs caught in a backsliding bildungsroman. It's like this: half the time, I think of myself as a feminist, and the other half is spent wondering, "What kind of f.u.c.king feminist does this s.h.i.+t?" Yeah, full disclosure: we're a conflicted bunch, self-professed "long d.i.c.k n.i.g.g.as with real short fuses" who (like Jimmy Carter) "have l.u.s.ted in our hearts" (to infinity and beyond). So, no the s.h.i.+t wasn't right, but it was f.u.c.king real. There was this specter of anachronism that ate at our sense of relevancy. The boho dance was played out and we missed the immediacy, the last-ditch-ness of the debauchery that we'd been talking ourselves out of for years. We were in this loop of life as art imitating life, at once us and this wanton wanting other. The center was not holding, our tipping point was an unraveling-not some Gladwellian singularity. That moment was about the sometimes-black saint and the sometimes-metaphoric sinner lady, and so creating this recording studio-c.u.m-strip-club felt right, unprecedented even (although in retrospect it was simply garden variety misogynistic or maybe just the cultural equivalent of an auto-erotic asphyxiation).

25. There was a black dude at the label who was sort of Jimmy's sidekick. When we got signed he went on and on: "If Jimmy pulls the trigger he can make anything happen... he just pulls the trigger, and everything changes for y'all... just wait until he pulls the trigger." As it turned out, we just got pounded like s.h.i.+t by the critics, and Jimmy disappeared on us, and that was that. So much for the f.u.c.king trigger.

26. What Tariq was-what he is-is a long-breath singer, a n.i.g.g.a in the universe, a crack-era holocaust survivor whose loneliness won't leave him alone. As he said in "Act Too (The Love of My Life)," "Sometimes I wouldn'ta made it if it wasn't for you." Tariq grew up in some dark places and hip-hop was this great redeemer and his raison d'etre... like it literally saved his life. He's always intuitively avoided the ersatz rapper character thing. I think he can appreciate that apparel on someone else but he ain't even going to attempt to try them duds on. I don't think it's even a conscious choice so much as some core aversion. Sorta like not eating food that smells like s.h.i.+t.

27. And to keep your s.h.i.+rt on.

28. Jimmy Iovine really believed in this project. He went as far as to call me personally when the alb.u.m was done and tell me that it was a high-water mark in popular culture. Look, I'm a natural-born contrarian. Doubt is etched into my being like it's part of my DNA or synaptic wiring or sumthin'. So, the whole idea and experience of the near-mythological Jimmy "f.u.c.kin' " Iovine, Mr. No Doubt himself, counting the ways in which he loved us, right on the other side of the transceiver... well, it seemed more than just a bit surreal. It seemed big (and ersatz elevator-like). So, I thought about how it truly didn't matter what I thought about the s.h.i.+t and about how rarely good has much to do with anything. All the world's a stage, and all its actors are on the grift. And, contrary to Gladwell's thinking, it was the big things that seemed to make the big difference. But herein lies the rub. For all Jimmy's puff-n-stuff, n.i.g.g.as did not warm to the record. And, on top of that, we had lost our most beloved critical swag. After The Tipping Point's release I remember an influential editor telling a close friend that the Roots were "so 2002." It was August 2004.

29. Hip-hop ain't dead, but it has become a winner-take-all affair, and its winningest artists consistently portray the patriarchal swag of lives that "ain't nothing but b.i.t.c.hes and money." To quote the noted scholar and cultural critic Tricia Rose, "commercial mainstream American Hip Hop has become the cultural arm of predatory capitalism." Is the genre "technically" better on some beats-and-rhymes-s.h.i.+t level? Yes, but "technical better" isn't really what it's about. A true better is about being able to empathize with the artists who are doing it and being able to build a sense of self on that empathetic platform. Hip-hop these days is a reductive thing. When people respond to Jay-Z, are they empathizing with him, or are they just admiring his alt.i.tude-the things and people he's acquired-and losing part of themselves in the process?

30. But even at that level, we were limited in what we could do. Unless your s.h.i.+t is mega poppy, you're not going to play Wisconsin regularly. You can do New York, D.C., Boston, Philly. You used to do Detroit before it became untenable. Definitely Los Angeles and San Francisco, maybe Portland. But you can't really do a gangbuster tour as a black act because that s.h.i.+t just isn't popping in the middle of America.

31. It wasn't often that simple, but that time it really was that simple. You called me, played the record, and we agreed it was a great direction. The funny thing was how f.u.c.king long it took for anything to happen after that. We kept waiting for Jim James to come and sing with us again.

32. More than six calls. I'm guessing it was close to a dozen. The pin was out of the grenade, and I was trying to get that s.h.i.+t a safe distance away before it blew.

33. Yeah, but one of the recent exceptions to this rule is Kendrick Lamar. His music is personal. He's writing s.h.i.+t about riding around in his mom's van and experiencing his own thoughts and feelings. There's a human behind the persona in his songs. And he's not the only one-Frank Ocean has accessible stories. But it's still different than it was. It's something that can happen now for an individual but it can't be a movement anymore, not really.

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