David Remnick: The MC Tariq Trotter who's known in music as Black Thought is considered by many to be one of the best rappers of all time, and you probably know his work with The Roots. The long-running hip-hop collective that's been a house band for Jimmy Fallon for more than a decade.

Jimmy Falon: Please welcome from the legendary Roots crew, a multiple Grammy Award winner, Tariq Trotter a.k.a. Black Thought. Team metaphor in the house. Thank you so much. I love having you on this side, man.

Tariq Trotter: Yes, me too. It's cool. One step closer to behind the desk.

[laughter]

David Remnick: Outside of his long career with The Roots, Trotter has also worked as an actor. Lately, he's been performing comedy too, and he's just made his theatrical debut in Black No More.

Tariq Trotter: I heard a doctor preaching about science that could turn black white without the bleaching.

Speaker 1: [laughs] What doctor? What are you thinking? That witch must have you sinking into some insane--

David Remnick: Trotter wrote most of the music and lyrics and the book is by John Ridley. The show is based on a satirical novel of the Harlem Renaissance that dates from 1931. Trotter stars as a doctor who invented treatment to make Black people look white.

Tariq Trotter: Did I hear someone say killing? No lives are at risk. Need I remind you how many years of which I've been in practice before this scientific breakthrough? Please allow me to reshape and awake you. Allow me to take and remake you. Go ahead. Thank you. I'll charge a man half of you all for a tone so pure you'll be Black no more and back for an [unintelligible 00:01:32]

David Remnick: Staff writer Jelani Cobb spoke with Tariq Trotter in the lobby of the theater just before rehearsal.

Jelani Cobb: How do you think of yourself in the rare event that you might have to go some place and people don't know who you are? How do you introduce yourself?

Tariq Trotter: I always introduce myself as Tariq. I think it's weird, "Hi, I'm Black Thought." [chuckles]. People make choices. It's cool if you go by your moniker or whatever. Yes, for me, I've always separated church and state in that way.

[music]

Jelani Cobb: How did the name Black Thought, which is I think one of the more indelible in hip hop. How did that name come about?

Tariq Trotter: Originally, I had a bunch of nicknames that have to do with just my skin tone. You know what I mean? Some would hurt my feelings when I was a young person, some not so much. When I lived in UK for a while, my friends refer to me as Blacka. When I was a little guy in South Philly sometimes I ran with some Puerto Rican kids, and they would call me Black Boy Roy. Yes, there was always just a blackness associated with how I referred to myself. I grew up as a visual artist, painting, and I went to the high school of creative and performing arts, which is where The Roots began.

Just as a visual artist there, sometimes using my palette, trying to come up with different shades of different dark tones of Black or something close to blackness. I would have to use almost every color in the palette.

[rap music playing].

Tariq Trotter: It resonated with me as one of the parallels of my style. Definitely at the time too, I was throwing everything against the wall to see what stuck, and I would do dance hall stuff, and I would sing a little bit. I would do one song where I sounded more like Chuck D, or someone who would be associated with Public Enemy, and then the next song would be like more Juice Crew. You know what I mean? I just had all these different tones of style.

[music]

Jelani Cobb: You mentioned that you started out as a visual artist, and you did sculpture, you did painting. How did rap come to be rapping? Come to be the preeminent for your art?

Tariq Trotter: For me, I was born in 1973 in October, arguably two months after hip hop was born, so we grew up as one.

[music].

Tariq Trotter: That was all I knew, and everyone that I knew knew. I come from an era where we embraced the culture in its entirety. I was a rapper, I was a B-boy, I was a graffiti artist, I was a DJ, I was a human beatbox. Everything that came with it was a part of my life. Throughout, I was always a visual artist. That's what my mother had steered me towards. She sent me to art school, and whenever she could afford art classes on a Saturday or there was an art camp that was associated with the city of Philadelphia that you could do during the summer. Just to keep me from sitting idly by 11:00 or 12:00 in the afternoon when some of my other friends will be just waking up and getting outside for the day. I will be coming back from taking art classes.

Jelani Cobb: One of the things I think that stands out about your work and your lyricism, in particular, is just how many literary references and illusions there are. It was almost like finding your way through a card catalog and the names of albums. Things Fall Apart, which is also the title of a novel by Chinua Achebe. The Tipping Point, which is also book by my colleague Malcolm Gladwell. On Streams of Thought Volume 1, you have a song titled Dostoyevsky.

[music].

I wondered how that got started and what role literature has played in influencing your art.

Tariq Trotter: I feel like the arts has always come to me more naturally. Once I realized that something that I could say in the song might inspire someone else to want to do more research, or you want to dig beyond that song to get a better understanding of what made me make that reference, then it became a benchmark. You know what I mean? I think Killah Priest from Wu-Tang Clan once said that too much knowledge could break up the rhyme, which is very true. It's easy to come off as preachy or teachy, and to have the listener begin to shut down. It's just a delicate balance.

Jelani Cobb: Your last studio album with The Roots was 2014. Is there anything in the works with you all now?

Tariq Trotter: Yes, we've been working on a new Roots album since then. Yes, I feel like we could've put out a few at this point just because of the way we work. We overindulge in the studio, in the process. I've come to appreciate just the feeling, the power that lies within having the content done and then doing some more. You know what I mean? I never want to be presented with, "Okay. It's time to do an album." Or something to work on this thing, and now I have to figure out what I'm going to do. Once I got ahead of the curve a little bit, I've been really conscious to stay there. My next eight albums are in my phone right now. Then the Roots album, because we're a collective. Once we're all-- Really once Questlove and I agree that the album is done, then it's done. It could be done tomorrow if we need it to be.

Jelani Cobb: In the end of 2017, you dropped a 10-minute freestyle on Funk Master Flex's show, which people thought was a bit as astounding example of freestyle rapping. Can you tell me about how that came about?

Tariq Trotter: It was I think on a Thursday, if I'm not mistaken. Whatever day it was, we had recorded two tonight shows, so I was pretty tired. It was cold, it was the dead of winter. I hit Flex up and told him I was going to come through.

[music]

Jelani Cobb: Did reaction surprise you?

Tariq Trotter: I was a little surprised by the reaction because I didn't do anything differently than I've always done. I didn't say hey, I'm going to rap for 9 or 10 minutes and I'm going to say all these things. I just went to do what I do and it took place during the time where what it is that I do and what I grew up doing was far less common and it just felt more alien and reminded people like ''Oh shit, this is how you really do it.''

Jelani Cobb: In terms of performance, is it different? You have been on a stage for the majority of your life at this point. Is it different performing in the musical context than it is in the theatrical context? What's it like? What has it been like this far going up on stage and doing the play?

Tariq Trotter: It's very different. When I'm rapping at a rap show or if I'm at, I don't know, if I'm performing with an orchestra, if I'm performing at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall it's always about the movement. Speaking a lot more with my hands, with my body, moving around, making eye contact with lots of the folks in the audience. Here at least with Black No More, it's more about stillness. It's not to distract, not to take away from what's being said. I've had to learn to just be more still and to engage with the audience in a different way. When you get a laugh or a gasp or an applause, it works in the same way that it does or that it would on stage doing comedy or on stage with The Roots.

Jelani Cobb: Because you do comedy also?

Tariq Trotter: I do.

Tariq Trotter: Broccoli rabe, it's like it's the only broccoli that's bitter for no reason. It's like come on, man, way to bring the room down, rabe. I mean no, think about it. All the other broccoli is good, right? Like the little baby broccolini, little organic broccoli, it tastes-- it is almost sweet. All the cousins, cauliflower. They're having a moment right now. They're good.

[laughter]

Speaker 3: They are having a moment right now.

Tariq Trotter: Well, even the OG broccoli with the Afro. It's good but then rabe is just bitter for no reason. I don't like it. You can tell whenever all the broccoli family gets together they're like, ''If rabe calls, I'm not here.''

[laughter]

Tariq Trotter: You're up there as a comedian. You're on your own. It's just you and your ideas and a microphone and no light show and no band. It's something that I began to just make myself more comfortable with being vulnerable in that way on stage. You know what I'm saying? I've spent most of my career wearing sunglasses and with my hat pulled down low and with just very many layers of almost defense. After having done this for over 30 years, it's like, what else can I do? How can I become better? How can I become a better storyteller, a better performer? I arrived at just to become more personal. More personal, more personable. It's been definitely a cathartic exercise for me.

Jelani Cobb: Can you tell me how did your involvement with Black No More come about?

Tariq Trotter: My involvement with Black No More came about maybe six or seven years ago now when an opportunity was presented to me-- Well, really to The Roots as a collective to create some music that would potentially be associated with the theatrical interpretation of the book Black No More. John Ridley who I think had been thinking about this project for quite some time, he clicked up with Scott Elliot and decided that it might be a cool idea to try and step into the realm of theater.

John Ridley is a TV film person. That's his background. Scott Elliot had more experience in the realm of theater. The Roots, we make music, so it was definitely-- it made sense as a trifecta. Yes, it wound up as one of those projects that just landed in my lap because I was able to carve out enough time to do it.

[music]

Now over time, my focus became almost rapping as little as possible. I wanted this to be more above and beyond folks expectations. ''Oh, wow, Black Thought from The Roots, he's done this musical. I'm sure it's going to be super lyrical,'' and you know what I mean? Everyone's going to be wrapping their ass off, but when you come in then you'll realize that I've written love songs and duets and power ballads and country western ditties and stuff that's more associated with classical musical theater. I think it's just a pleasant surprise. It's like, ''Oh, wow it speaks to my talents as a force to be reckoned with in a different way.''

Jelani Cobb: It's a range of creative work.

Tariq Trotter: Absolutely.

Jelani Cobb: I have a broader question, which is that hip hop, in particular, but entertainment, in general, is punishing. It's not known for giving people opportunities for reinvention, longevity is not a given. I wonder what it means to you to be connected to an art form from childhood and to now have reached the age that you've reached and to still be thriving, to still be performing, to still be able to break new creative ground in the work that you're doing.

Tariq Trotter: It's a blessing for me. It's something that I definitely don't take for granted. I'm just very grateful. Those same limitations, they go beyond Hip Hop. Those limitations and that limited expectation of the limited range of expectation is placed on us as a people. You know what I mean? As a culture, as just a Black man, as a Black person. When I was a young person, lots of my friends and family didn't make it to the age of 20 let alone 30 or 40 or 50.

It was something that I just couldn't foresee. I feel like I'm an anomaly and almost an exception in many ways that I've made it as far as I have. That said, I still feel like there's still very far to go, there's still many rivers to cross. I've never felt as though, ''Oh, I've arrived.'' You know what I mean? That said, I'm still very thankful to be wherever it is that I am.

[music]

David Remnick: The rapper Tariq Trotter also known as Black Thought. He spoke with Jelani Cobb, staff writer at the New Yorker. Black No More is in previews and it opens this month.

[music]

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