Everything we've ever done has been for artistry's sake, and for the greater good and paying homage to those who came before us and paving the way for those who come after us.
— Black Thought
I don't sit down and write a song, and then slam down the phone like, 'We got another one!' and pop some champagne. It's like if someone's writing a novel: You write a series of drafts.
We don't try to please everyone. Those older fans who expect something from The Roots are a tad more important to me than getting new fans.
I like that the hard-core ruffians, the street thugs come up to me and say, 'Man, you killed it with Adele.'
As we get further into our career we're figuring out how to become more efficient as artists, and doing so many different things is testament to our cohesiveness as the Roots.
I'm not driven by the spotlight and I'm not that outgoing.
I grew up in the neighborhood where 'Rocky' came from.
If hip-hop is dead, then let it rest in peace and let's move on to something else.
The Tonight Show' afforded us the opportunity to work with The Muppets and other ‘Sesame Street' characters, and we always had the desire to do something that spoke to young people.
We usually overrecord. Then we boil it down to the cream of the cream.
The first rhymes I wrote, I was 9. It was Kool Moe Dee-style.
The Evolution of Greatness' was an amazing experience, and it's something that we hope to have been a steppingstone for us to come back and not only do more NBA All-Star performances, but do halftime performances at events like the Super Bowl.
We are true to our name. We're somewhat beneath the surface, and I think well always be to a certain extent.
What we do every day onstage, there's lights, there's lots of other musicians, there's an audience, there's a microphone and mic stands - layers of the onion we have to kind of hide behind.
The difference between a Black Thought album and a Roots album is the texture, the instrumentation.
It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders the day I finally finished both verses for ‘My Shot.'
I'm down to work with anyone as long as it's an organic collaboration.
Don't do anything for fear, because fear will never do anything for you.
I remember when I was 15 or 16 years old, I couldn't imagine what life would be like past the age of 30, just because I didn't know that many men who had lived beyond their 20s.
For some music, lyrically, the best move is to keep it simple in what it is that you are saying, and just kind of come across in your rhythm and the way that you lock in on the music.
Everything I do has been a lifetime in the making.
My children have a world of opportunities that were not available to me. My kids have no idea about going without - there's no desire or need they have that hasn't been fulfilled, which is a blessing.
At this point, in 2008, if you put out a book, a movie, or write a verse, paint a painting, it should have some sort of social value.
We've been branded 'the thinking man's hip-hop.' So the music's got to have some level of maturity.
I do not seem like a funny guy.
I move in silence. I don't like puttin' too much of me out there to be dissected, analyzed.
The Roots want to dip our toes into everything in the arts.
I like to say hip-hop was born when I was in my mother's womb.
We're trying to plug a void and bring what's been missing back to hip-hop.
When people see that we're signed to Def Jam, the perception has changed.
‘Rise Up' is very necessary. Point blank.
I don't know that Dilla was the father of neo-soul as much as he was highly influential in that time when he was doing what he was doing at his best… Dilla's influence transcended genre and it transcended region.
To me I think leadership is activism. It's giving back to your community, it's investing in oneself, and you know women and children.
I definitely enjoy performing on stage with The Roots.
You can't expect every idea of yours to stick or even come to fruition, you have to make sacrifices for the greater good of the team.
We record in the spirit of the Berry Gordy camp and Gamble & Huff, where people were writing up to a dozen quality songs within a day because the competition was that hard.
You are an instrument if you understand your voice and how to use it - this sound, that sound and certain ranges and different pitch. Within that I try to find a rhythm and play the voice as if it was a horn.
I miss being out on the road.
I work well within The Roots because I can let my music speak for itself while Ahmir does most of the press and the promotion and the brand-building because he enjoys that.
I love Trader Joe's.
I feel like visual art, the culinary arts, the theatrical arts - the medium changes, the tools that you use to tell whatever the story changes, but you're still all telling stories.
There probably won't be an animated The Roots or Black Thought as there was, say, an animated Michael Jackson when ‘The Jackson 5' cartoon show was on when we were kids.
You can only be the great artist for so long - come out with effort after effort that garners all this praise.
What we were doing was alien in '92. We were less than immediately accepted by our fans and peers.
I think we could really play the Olympics.
Commercial success won't come to us from a change in the music. It will gradually be the result of a change in the appetite of the audience.
In a lot of places Jay-Z is considered God, Philly, our hometown being one of them.
I'm tryin' to get some acting credibility, get some other work.
There's a lot of terms we come up with for the music that we're making because we want something that's going to be definitive. Often there is no word to encapsulate the emotion that the music represents.
Anyone that I've ever worked with, it's not like I just meet you or someone throws us together for the sole purpose of coming up with a song that's gonna be a hit. I have to have some sort of relationship, or we had to have interacted on some other sort of level and that's when it feels most natural.
