The Root of it All!

“Rock the Bells was the first big festival I was covering. The Roots were about to hit the stage. I love this shot because it just shows part of ?uest, but you know who it is because he’s an iconic artist. You only need to show a piece and people will know it’s ?uest.”

– Trevor Traynor

Artists: Questlove

Photographer: Trevor Traynor

Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Location: San Francisco, CA

Photo © Trevor Traynor Originally Featured in RESPECT. #24

The post Photographer TREVOR TRAYNOR: On a Quest! appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

“When Questlove shared his idea, inviting some of his closest friends to participate in a virtual dinner party supporting America’s Food Fund, an initiative working to make sure that food is available to so many in need, we knew we wanted to be first at the table, to see what each guest would be cooking.”

The post Questlove Sets The Table For A Potluck With Friends appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

Film and television producers Joslyn Rose and Noris Rose launch the second episode of their HEAR THE ROSES podcast on Wednesday, January 18, on HeartheRoses.com.

The weekly series about passion, perseverance and the pursuit of dreams, features photographer Mel D. Cole who shares his journey from picking up a disposable camera to becoming one of the most influential photographers in the music scene.

Listen: Soundcloud.com/heartheroses

HEAR THE ROSES is also available on partner sites The Museum of Light, Fusicology, and RESPECT. Magazine.

The post Hear the Roses Podcast Features Photographer Mel D. Cole House Photographer for Legendary Roots Crew and Trey Songz  appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

If you’re like many within the Hip-Hop community, it’s a special moment in history every time The Roots release a new album — from Illadelph Halflife to Things Fall Apart to Undun and everything in between (as well as outside of the commercial discography).

As their musical journey continued on, the Philadelphia band delved into increasing amounts of experimentation, whether it’d be subject matter (ie. darker themes about life in America) or their selection of collaborators becoming more eclectic and — in some cases — truly legendary. This was certainly the case with their last release …and then you shoot your cousin, which represents their most out-of-body work to date. As it did the listener, it certainly must have taken the band well out of their comfort zone (and Hip-Hop, at many points throughout said album).

Now, it’s been revealed (by de facto spokesman Questlove) that The Roots are now hard at work on a new offering. In a series of Instagram posts, the world-renowned drummer shows the viewer quickstrike looks into the band’s studio sessions, all while using a hashtag for Endgame — the forthcoming album’s title. Upon first listen, it sounds like the crew is reverting back to a more traditional, alternative-Hip-Hop feel (also spotted in one of the video clips: producer Salaam Remi behind the boards). Definitely something to be excited about.

You can check out the clips and accompanying messages from Questlove below.

In 1996 w our 3rd album #IlladelphHalflife we decided to be our own sampling source and jam in the day and sample ourselves at night. 20 years later we are working on our 17th album entitled #Endgame….& we startin all over again. Here the gawd @StroElliot is breaking out his get busy tools and making ish sound tight!

A video posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Oct 17, 2016 at 10:11pm PDT

We Comin For Blood Man. #Endgame day 2 @stroelliot @jperiodbk @kirklloyd @theroots

A video posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Oct 18, 2016 at 5:37pm PDT

Son. I can’t remember the last time I made 12 bangers in a 24 hour period. Came to the studio and knocked like 6 joints off w @StroElliot then went into the next studio to see what @SalaamRemi had cookin knocked those jawns out and right when I thought I was spent…..went to the upstairs room and got 2nd wind and made 7 CRAZY joints w @KarriemRiggins1—4am we still goin! #Endgame day 3

A video posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Oct 20, 2016 at 12:59am PDT

& another one. Key to making music is to LOVE making music. It’s 4:30am and we still in the zone. I’m not tryna knock the hustle (using music to survive) but the question lies in the passion of it all: if you don’t have a passion for the music it will be a diminished return in your life. I still love music. Never has making an album been so cool. #Endgame day 3 @TheRoots

A video posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Oct 20, 2016 at 1:18am PDT

Lol who needs a 17th record when you got perfect IG looping skills? #Endgame Day 4 #SalaamRemi

A video posted by Questlove Gomez (@questlove) on Oct 20, 2016 at 9:10pm PDT

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At this point it appears that everyone is writing a essay or open letter to Prince.  We all may as well get to writing our own. Following Frank Ocean and Erykah Badu’s, the latest is Questlove of The Roots. In his essay through Rolling Stone Magazine the drummer reflects on his friendship with the musician before and after they met. Read his powerful essay below:

When I first got Prince’s 1999 album, it was 1982. I was 11, newly in charge of my own record-buying habits. And I couldn’t resist the cover, with its purple field of stars, Prince’s name, the numbers, and all the hidden-meaning illustrations (is that a football or a smile? How phallic was that “1,” anyway?). My parents didn’t agree. They were born-again Christians at that point, and Prince — with his overt sexuality and profanity — was a bridge too far.  Plus, when you turned the album cover upside down, the 999 went to 666, the mark of the beast. My mom found the record and threw it away. Winter came. I shoveled snow until I had enough money to buy it a second time. That one went into the garbage, too. There was a third record that just vanished without a trace, and a fourth that got broken over my father’s knee. That fourth infraction came accompanied by a month of punishment. A little while after that, I got smarter, meaning sneakier. I found a friend to make me cassettes of Prince’s albums. At home, I loosened the heads of my drums and hid the contraband in there. I listened when I was practicing, playing something totally different on the drums so that my parents wouldn’t know what I was actually hearing.

Prince was in my ears and he was in my head. Starting then, I patterned everything in my life after Prince. I had older half-brothers, but Prince — unknown to me then, but not unseen or unheard, thanks to magazines, TV, radio, and my secret stash — was a guide to me in every way. I studied his fashion, I studied his affect. I studied his taste in women — carefully. And he began to mentor me in musical matters, too. I wouldn’t have started listening to Joni Mitchell without him. And that led me to Jaco Pastorius, who led me to Wayne Shorter, who led me to Miles Davis. I had a simple rule: if Prince listened to it, I listened to it.

In the wake of his death, as we all try to come unstunned, everyone is talking about his genius. That’s understandable. But most of the discussion is general. I like to think about the specifics. I like to think of the way he innovated even early on, the way he turned away from the traditional blueprint of funk and soul music.

Think about James Brown. Prince certainly did, as did every funk and soul artist of his generation. But Prince was brilliantly perverse in the way he absorbed James Brown. If James was about a tight crack snare and percussive horns as an extended rhythmic arm, Prince went the opposite direction — he made undeniable funk from a dud of a dead snare sound and the artificial horns of the Oberheim synthesizer.

James Brown’s magic streak ran between 1965 and 1975; anyone who was anybody in black music, for the next 30 years, borrowed from that period the most. Michael Jackson borrowed dance moves. Rappers borrowed samples. But Prince, perhaps James’s truest heir, looked to the period after that, when James was thought to be in decline.

In sound checks, Prince would make his band play “Body Heat,” a 1976 hit for Brown, and he would make them play it endlessly. They’d lock into the groove and stay there. It was like Prince was using the Revolution as a sampler, and he looped that groove so that he could play along with it — and, eventually, play around with it. And “It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night,” from Sign O’ The Times in 1987, is a brilliant reworking of Brown’s “Gravity,” from 1986. Who else was really listening to James Brown at that point, let alone listening sharply enough to put it through the replicator and remake it on the spot?
Prince’s relationship to hip-hop has been the subject of much scrutiny, and more than a little mockery. It’s commonplace to say that he couldn’t figure out rap music, and to point to the sometimes stilted appearances of rappers on his records in the early Nineties. But at heart, he was more hip-hop than anyone.

Think of 1999 again — or rather 1982. It was such a banner year for the use of drum machines, from Arthur Baker to Afrika Bambaataa. Prince’s programming work on 1999 was beyond anything I had ever heard, just as innovative as the best hip-hop producers in the years to come: the Bomb Squad, DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Dr. Dre, A Tribe Called Quest, J Dilla.

I have always felt that the true mark of a genius is to look beyond the hits on their records to what people uncharitably call “the filler.” 1999, like Thriller, was all killer, no filler, but it was on the second side where the album really took wing. A song like “Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)” told me that Prince was not a regular person, or a regular musician. He had removed the bass from the original demo (at the time forbidden in black music, an innovation that would pay off even more powerfully on “When Doves Cry”), added a dizzying snare/hi-hat combination and delivered his vocals in a kind of ice-cold, almost robotic manner. It wasn’t just one new idea — it was several, all together; you knew from that song and the album tracks around it (“Automatic,” “Lady Cab Driver”) that he was going to be the new breed leader.

Stand up, organize.

These are only some of the completely surprising, completely successful musical choices he made, and there are thousands more. But as I said, it was everything else, too. Prince was an outlaw. When he was giving interviews on the regular to Cynthia Horner in Right On! magazine, he was telling tall tales left and right. That was hip-hop. He built a crew, a posse, around his look and his sense of style. That was hip-hop. He had beef (with Rick James). He had his own vanity label (Paisley Park). He had parents up in arms over the content of his songs to the point where they had to invent the Parental Advisory warning. Hip-hop, hip-hop, hip-hop.

And then came Purple Rain, and the world changed. Before that, I kept my Prince obsession close to the vest. But the day after the video for “When Doves Cry” premiered, I was shocked to see that my secret was out. Everyone suddenly knew what I knew, which is that Prince was like nothing else, and that he was everything. Kids who liked music talked about the music. Kids who liked art talked about the visuals. And out on the basketball court, all they could talk about was the honey he was tonguing down. (This was still about a month and a half before the movie came out, so no one knew much about Apollonia yet. That would change.)

Later on, I got into the music business myself. I got to meet Prince several times. I roller-skated with him. I went to parties that he threw. But I always felt like a fan, never a peer. I remember once I was at Paisley Park. By this time, Prince was a Jehovah’s Witness, and he didn’t stand for cursing. I slipped up. It wasn’t anything too major. I think I said “shit.” Prince had a curse jar; every curse cost a dollar. “But you’re rich,” he said. “Put in $20.” “Hey,” I said. “You taught me how to curse when I was little.” People laughed at the joke, but I thought I saw Prince wince a little bit, too, and I walked away wondering if I just confirmed to him that he was justified in taking a hard line. Maybe he actually felt bad that he had turned a generation of kids toward foul language and impure thoughts. I hope not. I was just trying to get out of paying a fine that was justified, for cursing that was probably justified, learned from music that will forever be justified.

Prince was singular in his music. He was his own genre. That same singularity extended to everything. He went the other way in life, too. As he got older, the way he managed his career showed off that contrary streak. It came to the forefront in the way he mastered his records, in the way he handled reissues, in the way he used (or didn’t use) the Internet and online streaming services. In the summer of 2014, his old band, the Revolution, reunited at First Avenue in Minneapolis. They were all set up for him to join in and play. He drove right past. Prince was a great drummer, and he was always marching to his own beat.

In moments of extreme sadness, pop-punk psychology may not be welcome, but it sometimes seemed like his need to do things his own way, and only his own way, overtook him. Control was job one to him, which allowed for amazing things in the studio and onstage, unprecedented leaps of inspiration and synthesis and an energy so prolific it seemed like it would never be shut off. But it also suggested that there was a level of mistrust when it came to letting the outside world in.

There is a fictionalized version of this in Purple Rain, where one of the main points of contention throughout the film is whether The Kid (played by Prince) will listen to a song on a cassette given to him by Wendy and Lisa. Eventually he does, and it evolves into “Purple Rain,” and The Kid plays onstage, both as a tribute to his father and a way of making peace with the group. It’s an emotional moment for every character. In real life, it didn’t really happen that way. Sometimes I think that the thing that Prince shared with other geniuses — Ray Charles, Bessie Smith, and James Brown — is that they were abandoned, at some level, by their mothers. Many artists in black music were abandoned by fathers, but an absent mother creates a faultline that runs much deeper.

I don’t know. There’s so much we all don’t know. This is what I do know: Much of my motivation for waking up at 5 a.m. to work — and sometimes going to bed at 5 a.m. after work — came from him. Whenever it seemed like too steep a climb, I reminded myself that Prince did it, so I had to also. It was the only way to achieve that level of greatness (which was, of course, impossible, but that’s aspirational thinking for ya). For the last twenty years, whenever I was up at five in the morning, I knew that Prince was up too, somewhere, in a sense sharing a workspace with me. For the last few days, 5 a.m. has felt different. It’s just a lonely hour now, a cold time before the sun comes up.”

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The post Read Questlove’s Powerful Essay to Prince appeared first on RESPECT. | The Photo Journal of Hip-Hop Culture.

The Roots hosted their annual Roots Picnic two weekends ago and it was quite legendary! During the show, there were candid images taken by Shayan Asgharnia of the artists back stage and they are finally here to see! Check out some of the photos below and tell us which one is your favorite! The rest can be seen here.

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