Questlove has been in the Hip Hop game for decades, yet he has always had his finger on the culture’s pulse.
Earlier this month, the Roots drummer released a book titled Hip-Hop Is History. In it, he “skillfully traces the creative and cultural forces that made and shaped” the craft since its inception in the early ’70s.
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While discussing the project with NPR in an interview that was published on Tuesday (June 25), the Philly native talked about previously declaring that “Hip Hop truly is dead” while slamming Kendrick Lamar and Drake’s rap feud back in May.
“I don’t think hip-hop is dead,” he said, before naming artists he believes have energized the genre in recent yers. “If an MC like Little Simz, which people rarely talk about … I don’t think people give enough attention to Griselda: Westside [Gunn], Conway [The Machine] and Benny [The Butcher]. Or even, like, Tobe [Nwigwe], Mick Jenkins, Errol Holden, even Denzel Curry. There’s so much quality, dope stuff out there that just goes unnoticed and unchampioned.”
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The 53-year-old also addressed the aforementioned feud directly over the same chat to explain his stance.
“All right, here’s the deal,” he said. “I wish people would make up their minds. I’m in this weird middle place — and I talk about this a lot in my books. I live in the zone where I’m somewhere in between ‘Dude, you changed my life!’ and ‘You ain’t shit!’ Every day. So it’s a constant balance, and you don’t know what the reaction is going to be.”
“I was there at the Source Awards when the shit really hit the fan in 1995. And I was there in 1997. That was a ‘What now?’ moment for Hip Hop — Tupac and Biggie, embroiled in a battle. I’ve never seen a battle in which it ends well.
“We’re living in a polarizing time. We’re living in a time right now where World War III can easily break out at any moment. We’re living in a time when civil war can break out at any moment in the United States.
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“We’re living in a time where the uncertainty of something jumping off is just in the air. You know what I’m saying? For me it’s like, I’ve seen this movie before — and I’m triggered. The aftereffect of Tupac and Biggie was just a 30-year travel into darkness.”
K.Dot and Drizzy’s animosity has reached new heights recently, with the Compton native performing a number of diss tracks aimed at his adversary during a “Pop Out” show in Los Angeles earlier this month.
