Hello and welcome back to the Rinse for this week. When I started laying out this month’s post in my head, I knew that I wanted to talk about two particular artists in this set: Sly and Robbie and Questlove. Sly and Robbie was a no-brainer in my head; given their influence, I absolutely had to write about them. But, the question that kept coming back up in my head was why Questlove? I remembered listening to Voodoo and then just having this realization of wanting to talk about him. But I asked myself was there something more than I could say than what I did in that D’Angelo tribute? The answer was yes. As it turns up, Questlove becomes important to discuss because he sits as one of the major players in the development of two music scenes that developed in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The first movement—and the most obvious one if you know Questlove—is the alternative rap movement. Questlove, with Tarik Trotter, his friend from high school, started The Roots, one of the few hip-hop bands. Based in Philadelphia, the band became renowned for their live shows. However, the albums did not equal that energy. Their first albums, Organix, Do You Want More?!!!??, and Illadelph Halflife, are capable albums, filled with solid, jazzy rhythms and strong rhymes. The music was very much a part of the jazz-rap and underground movements bubbling during the 1990s (think Black Star, Jurassic 5, and Gang Starr here). However, they suffer from the same problems that afflict many bands whose primary form is jamming: the music is slack. It lacks forward momentum, and needed more editing. This being said, it is clear that The Roots are working towards something important, and that promise became clear on Things Fall Apart, their seminal album from 1999.

Across the 68 minutes of this album, the band displays a complete control of hip-hop. The beats created by the band are sharp and creative. They are littered with fine details that reward repeat listens. The same can be said for the raps spit by Malik B. and Black Thought. While they suffer from some of the same problems that every underground/conscious rapper from this period did—constantly talking about being Islamic and the meaninglessness of mainstream rap, among other things—these can be overlooked because they are beautifully written and sharply delivered. Because there are so many options on this record, I’m going to use the one that blew me away when I bought this album back in 1999: “The Next Movement.”

Black Thought is on top form on this song, delivering nonstop burners on this track. He hits this section that hit me when I was a teen and hits me as an adult:

This is just one of many displays of excellent old-school rhyming. The album just has track after track full of this. But, a lot of other albums had this as well, so I’m still left to wonder why I needed to talk about Questlove. The answer that I came to is that he is the reason that this album works so well.

His drumming is tight and sharp. He never overplays, staying in the pocket on the tracks. When necessary, he can unleash and play a fun, fast line that just reminds you of how nice he is. More importantly, his drumming reminds listeners of how well live instrumentation and hip-hop go together. For a genre based on repurposing old sounds, using live instruments is something of a novelty. But, the benefit of such instrumentation is that the lyrics can take the forefront; they aren’t drowned out by warbling bass lines or anything of the sort. As well, they provide a grounding force and live energy in a way that a drum machine cannot.

To consider this idea a bit more, let’s look at a non-Roots album. Mos Def, who appears on “Double Trouble” on Things Fall Apart, released his album Black on Both Sides in 1999. This album is notable for being a display of how nice Mos Def is as a rapper, even if he uses a few too many words. Furthermore, it is a clear example of how well The Roots’s live instrument style works in hip-hop. While there is a lot of sampling on the album, there is also a lot of live instrumentation. The track that uses it the best is “Umi Says”:

On here, you can hear that live hip-hop drumming in a different context, and it works beautifully. It provides an excellent groove while still going hard. Furthermore, it gives the track a very organic feeling, making Mos Def’s words hit a bit deeper than they would over a regular drum loop. And this is fitting given the message of uplift that he is sing-rapping about on this track. Lastly, the track feels looser, which benefits Mos Def’s slightly more intellectual rapping style. Hard beats never really worked super well for Mos Def. He can rap on them, but he sounds more natural over the relaxed beats that live drums can provide.

This looser, hip-hop-influenced style of drumming pioneered by Questlove shows up in the other movement that he played a massive role in: the neo-soul movement. Led by artists like D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, Questlove was there, playing the drums and bringing that hip-hop groove into the soulful stylings of these artists. The result was a music that was rooted in the emotions of the soul genre while giving it a much needed update, connecting it with the pace of the streets.

This template has been with us for decades now thanks to the work of those artists at the turn of the millennium. While the current neo-soul music is referencing more synthetic drum styles from trap, we only have to look back to the work that Questlove was doing for D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, among others, to see how they made such work possible.

At the end of the day, to return to my initial question, I needed to write about Questlove in a month where I focus on beats because he helped to establish new ways for Black music to consider rhythm. In hip-hop, the organic drums provide a grounded feel that makes the message being spit by mc’s like Black Thought and Mos Def hit harder. In addition, it shows that you can be hip-hop in a new, interesting way. In soul music, the driving rhythm gives the music more emphasis, more focus. It helps to connect it more to the streets, updating it for a new generation. So, we all owe Questlove a tip of the cap. He’s done more sitting on the throne than many of us ever have or ever will.

Thank you for reading the Rinse. Please tell your friends to subscribe, and I will see you again next week for a discussion about a Black woman’s music. Which one is still to be determined. Take care of yourselves and each other. And, as always, pet a cat or a dog if they are cool with it.