I like that the hard-core ruffians, the street thugs come up to me and say, 'Man, you killed it with Adele.'
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.
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.
I'm in great company and some may say that the underexposure has added to my allure and the staying power of me as a MC and The Roots as a band.
I move in silence. I don't like puttin' too much of me out there to be dissected, analyzed.
It's weird what can trigger the beginning of a song or some bars. It can be a banging slice of apple pie or it can be smelling a certain perfume or something.
Although there are people who regard 'Do You Want More?!!!??!' as our first major release, I think 'Things Fall Apart' was the real arrival of The Roots, so to speak.
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.
We always do kinda like the bare bones representation or variation of the voice and drums, which is what we feel is the foundation or backbone of rapping and hip hop.
I made the mistake of going to a barber who was not from Philly, and let's just say, I would never do that again.
I think the true artist - musician, dancer, writer, actor - a true artist is able to sort of articulate pain and tragedy, in a way that sort of expresses what the listener or the beholder may have been feeling but was less able to communicate.
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.
I think at the end of the day the diversity has served as a major… that's what has determined the difference between The Roots and some of the other artists from our graduating class. I feel we followed the De La Soul, the Native Tongue blueprint.
We usually overrecord. Then we boil it down to the cream of the cream.
We've been branded 'the thinking man's hip-hop.' So the music's got to have some level of maturity.
We are true to our name. We're somewhat beneath the surface, and I think well always be to a certain extent.
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.
Some of my favorites are the classics like 'What They Do,' 'Proceed,' 'You Got Me,' and 'Silent Treatment.'
I've become a functioning cog in the machine called The Roots, but in my youth I was comin' from a more braggadocious, egotistical perspective.
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.
