Preview: Noble Champions with Santigold

Hey Talkhouse listeners, this is Josh Modell. Rather than our regular episode. This week I've got another holiday treat for you from the Talkhouse Podcast Network. It's an episode of Noble Champions, the newish podcast from visionary, multi platform artist Santee Gold. She envisioned her podcast as a modern day salon and she's had some fantastic guests in her first season. Here's an episode featuring Questlove, Angela Yee and Tunde Adebempe. Stay tuned for new episodes of noble champions in 2023. Enjoy.

Hi, this is Santi Gold and you're listening to my new podcast, Noble Champ Conversations to expand your mind, feed your soul and push culture forward. I was explaining in the last episode that because this podcast was inspired during the process of making my new record, Spirituals, I thought it'd be cool to play the inspiration song off the record that correlates to each episode. So for this episode, Black Outside the Box, the inspirational song of the day is my song Fall first, which is one of the more punk influenced songs on the record. I often include elements of punk in my music, starting even with my band Stiffed, and then into Santi Gold, which has consistently contributed to my music being considered alternative and never black. Which I think is not only a limited and inaccurate perception, but also a disturbing reality for all black artists who create art outside of the box of what is deemed acceptable art for black people to create. So a question I've been asking myself for years, ever since I started making music, is what is black music? And if my music and other alternative black artists are outside the box of what is considered black, then who built the box? And what's the bigger impact of caging in or boxing out music or the artists that make it? So here's a bit of fall first.

We going fall fall give me your.

Hair I was a man.

I want my heart away.

For this episode, I really wanted to talk to a few people who I know understand the impact of the Black music box from varied perspectives. One is Questlove, who I've known for more than half my life as Amir and who of course had to come on one of the first episodes of my podcast because he's always there when I start new shit.

I remember your first video, your first album. Oh God, don't mention I remember your first car.

Questlove is the drummer and joint frontman alongside Tariq Trotter, AKA Black Thought of the band the Roots, who have transformed hip hop by incorporating live instrumentation, jazz, soul and rock influences. He's also a walking, talking black music Encyclopedia. He's produced recordings for artists including d' Angelo and Erykah Badu, and he's written several books, including Music is History, which explores popular music in America over the last 50 years. He also has a festival, the Roots Picnic. And speaking of music festivals, this year he won an Oscar for his Summer of Soul documentary, which is a story of the massive 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, sometimes called the Black Woodstock. That was a monumental, absolutely insane event with icons performing like Nina Simone, B.B. king, and Slyin the Family Stone that was basically lost history for about 50 years. Also joining me is Angela Yee. Angela has made her name hosting the nationally syndicated morning radio show the Breakfast Club. Because she's working in the heart of the music industry, Angela has lots of insights for us into the workings of the machine.

Wait, can I ask a question? Ang, are you in a bar right now?

It's her house.

I'm at home.

Angela's got a whole bar with every drink.

There's books. It's books and booze, so it's a balance.

Angela got her start as GZA of Wu Tang Clan's manager, but we met long before that as teenagers in college at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. We're also joined by Tunde Adebimpe, indie rock pioneer, as the lead singer of the band TV on the Radio. But he's also an actor, director, artist, cartoonist, and he has beamed in to join us from his garage.

I was saying everyone looks like they're in a very nice room.

I love your background. To be honest, I think it looks like a movie. It's amazing.

This conversation is so fun. It's a full on musical geek out. We talk seminal recording artists like Bad Brains, Nina Simone, Fela Kuti, the Last Poets, and more, more and more. Plus we cover the far and wide musical influences we sponged up in our lives. Who decides what black music is and how this music becomes popular? Is it radio shows? Has the Internet democratized success? Who are the tastemakers? I love this because these guys are like my family. So I hope you guys enjoy the ride.

So today we're talking about black music outside the box. But the first thing I'm really interested in talking about is the idea of pushing the boundaries of what is considered black. What's considered black? What's considered black music. So, Questlove, who I might call Amir throughout the podcast, just so everybody knows who I'm talking to.

Just call me Amir so we don't make it weird.

All right, so I met you when I was 17 years old and I think I was interning at Roughhouse Records in Philly and I think you had just finished interning.

Yeah. Give a perspective. Because now this sounds weird. Like, I met you when I was 17 and I'm like, still 51.

Well, she did. She was interned a year was in during her internship.

She was 17, I was 20. So let's. Okay, let's put her in perspective with each other. Okay.

I didn't know you were older than me like that. Okay, well.

You have a big birthday coming up.

No, no.

Anyway. Sorry. Okay.

Yeah. I was gonna say that my last day at Roughhouse was the day that I first met you. I distinctly remember my last day there saying goodbye to the staff and announcing to them that after busking on the corners of south street for about a year or so, that Tareka and I managed to get a record deal.

No way.

Yeah. I met you that day. But here's something you don't know, Sant. I credit you a lot with a lot of my left to center mind expansion. I never knew who Fela Cootie was until I met you. When you would give me lifts home, I wonder who would make a song that's the entire duration the ride of where I was in Philadelphia to my house who makes 19 minute songs. You also made me see Nina Simone in a different light. You also really introduced me to Bad Brains. I was like, oh, wow, a black person that's into Bad brains. All right, let me check it out, because Yaako always talks about that whenever we're touring with the Beastie Boys. And then I guess once you finally got your footing into your career. I had a lot of homework to do back in 2004, 2005, 2006. Just doing my homework on just this whole alternative music scene that I was totally unaware about until I moved to New York City. It started with you, and then I just worked my way down the first generation of. I won't say the H word, but I'll just say alternative music because everyone overuses the H word when it comes to Brooklyn bands and whatnot. So, yeah, you planted a lot of seeds in my head that I never thanked you for, because now I've made a living out of my knowledge of those very specific movements.

Thank you. I never knew that. I'm so glad you told me that it's cool, because I think that's what's great about having groups of creative friends. Because you influence me and I influence you, and we all influence each other. But like, you are somebody who have outsmarted and out imagined and out created any ideas of what anybody might have thought you might be. Like. You have just broken out of every box and gone from one career to another career and succeeded in all of them.

I've surprised myself, like, well, amazing, right?

It's amazing.

Especially now. I think the pandemic has taught me. I might have been in a fetal position, crying and having panic attacks for, like, three months. And then one day, I think, like, around June, I was open to anything. It's not to say that I don't wake up some days feeling like an imposter syndrome. Like, can I really write a fictional novel? Can I really run for president? I'll say that after the summer of 2020, a lot has changed in my life. I'm just open now, so I'm surprising myself.

Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the best thing you could have taken away from 2020. So, Tunde, you and I were just having a conversation the other day about all the things related to being black artists and musicians in particular, trying to walk this road and all the different things that come up for us. Can you tell me a bit about where you're coming from on this idea of what black is exactly, or what black has been deemed?

Well, in the context of music or art. I grew up in Pittsburgh, the predominantly white community.

Monty Brothers.

The Monty Brothers, exactly. I ate a sandwich with fries on it and was like, this is my hometown. This is what we do here, apparently.

Yes, it is.

It's not just a side, you know, when people just. Like, I was always different, and I da, da, da, da, da. I started off wanting to make art and be a cartoonist and was very pushed to the side. Not pushed to the side, but I hung out with the outcasts or whatever. Like, we were just the nerdy kids of various races and backgrounds who were just like, you guys are the dorks. You hang out together. And that's where I found friends who would introduce me to what was then underground music tapes from their older brothers. That's where I heard Bad Brains. That's where I heard the Pixies. It's where I got introduced to this idea of an alternative. But it never. At that point when I was thinking about music or art, I felt like, okay, I'm an outcast. My East Indian friend is an outcast. My Asian friend is an outcast. It never came to me as, you're weird for listening to this music because you're black. Until I feel like I got out of Pittsburgh and started making things, you know, outside of your group of friends and being told what you're making is not something that black people are going to listen to. And me thinking, well, I know black people who will listen to this. But larger scale, you know, you're out of your shell and you're just like, oh, no, I'm fucking double weird. Because I no longer have these circle of outcasts. And also the people that look like me that I would like to connect with are looking at me as someone who's making white music or in an alternative comic scene. And that's for white people. And I think, in a way I don't know exactly how to say, but not fitting in anywhere. I think you can either give up and decide to orient yourself to join up on some side where you're just kind of like, I don't really want to feel like I'm off to the side. So I'm going to either go and perpetrate in this area until I'm accepted, or I'm going to give up altogether and be as normal as I can be. Or you get into this thing where you're like, no, I have no choice but to be myself. And whatever I make is going to be considered black art by me. Whatever music I make is going to be considered black music by me. Whatever any black person makes can be considered black because it is. It is. But then there are levels of inspection, is how it relates to the dominant paradigm. And, like, what else is left?

I'm jealous. I'm like, wow, you found fellow nerds.

What?

I wouldn't get him to have fellow nerds to hang with. Wow.

No. We were like everyone who was left. We were just like everyone no one wanted to hang out with.

No one who chose us to play basketball.

Yes. Oh, my God. Exactly. Exactly. You got long fingers. You play the piano. No. Play basketball. No. What good are you? I don't know.

I feel like, you know what you said about perpetrating normalcy for a while, I feel like I did that. I fit in really well with all these different groups. I could jump around, though. I could be with all the black kids in my neighborhood. I could be with all the white girls at my all girls school. I could be downtown with whoever and seem totally like them. But then inside, I felt like nobody was all the way like me. And I feel like Angela. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Because I met Angela. I met you at 17 also. Angela was the first person I met at Wesleyan.

Angela's still 17.

She still does look 17, but yeah, so Angela was the first person I met. She was like one of the few black people on our hall at Wesleyan. And she said hi. She says I ignored her, but I did not.

She was hanging up a Mo Better Blues poster when I first met her. So she was very into it, very deep in concentration.

But, Ang, you know, you have an interesting perspective, too, because, first of all.

You'Ve known me for so long.

We grew up kind of into the same stuff. Like, that's kind of what brought us together, too, wasn't we're both so into hip hop. We went to shows where we leave Connecticut every weekend to go to New York to go to clubs and go to shows. We were so into music, and we both landed in the world of music career wise. But then sometimes it's interesting because I feel like we've landed on opposite sides of the world because you are right in one of the pillars of what they call urban radio and sort of working inside the machine. And yet you've also seen all my struggles and I'm sure struggles of many people trying to exist outside of that machine. So I'm sure you have, like, an interesting perspective.

Right? Well, you know, I grew up. I'm from Brooklyn, and so I feel like being from Brooklyn, hip hop was so big for us, especially in Flatbush, it was hip hop, and then it was a lot of dance hall and reggae. I also think that back then on the radio, they put all different types of music together. Right. When I first was growing up, it wasn't like a separate station. It was like a certain time that you could hear hip hop or you could watch a TV show late at night where there'd be hip hop videos on and then you would have to record it with the VHS tape. But that was really how I grew up. Like, you know, we were listening to, like, UTFO Crew and Salt and Pepper and all of that, but at the same time, randomly. The first concert I ever went to was an Anthrax and Warrant concert, which was heavy metal.

Go Edge.

Wow.

Wow.

It's the Warrant part that I'm like.

And Warrant, that's a weird pairing if.

You know those two groups.

But to be clear, you know, that big hair heavy metal music was really big back then, too, right? And so I think everybody listened to, like, Def Leppard and Aerosmith and Guns N Roses and Motley Crue, and they had those songs. It was on the radio.

We had to. Because in order to watch Beat it, the one Black video on mtv, you'd had to sit through an Hour of.

Everything else, you have to hang out.

Right, Exactly.

I think I've always enjoyed all kinds of music, but Prince was always my favorite person growing up. And I think that was beneficial, too, because I don't know what you would categorize Prince as.

I mean, he broke the mold, you know, it's hard to categorize him.

Yeah. So even to this day, I'm a huge Prince fan, but I feel like he wasn't an R and B artist. I don't even know like, what music. And I think it sucks that they have to categorize music the way that they do.

Well, at the end of the day, they put Prince in pop as soon as he starts selling lots of records.

Right, exactly.

And then watching Santi and her struggles, I remember people trying to categorize your music. They'd be like, oh, we need her at Afropunk, or something like that. They would be like, well, is she R and B? And I remember at first, people didn't even know that you were black, and.

They thought I was English. Everyone was like, you're not from London.

They had no idea. And I kind of feel like maybe you didn't want people to even focus on what you were and to just enjoy the music, if I'm not mistaken.

Well, I remember when I first came out, people were calling me a rapper in press, and they were calling me R and B artists in press. Yes, they were. Yes, they were. They were.

Yeah. Definitely calling her a rapper.

And then Amir, I was fighting so hard coming out of Philly not to be lumped in neo soul.

I had my arms out.

Oh, I know this Santi.

You know, I was like, please don't. Because I knew I would never get to be what I wanted to be if I got thrown in that thing. And that's what they were calling everybody.

Yeah.

I remember doing the interview with this guy, and he was like, so you come from a really rough background, and you come from the streets. And I was like, what?

I do?

I was like, I never said that in any interview. Yeah. And he just kept putting all this, like, stereotype stuff on my past. And I was like, dude, I think I said, you're racist. And he kept going. And I was like, what are you talking about?

And, you know. And Carlis Santi, I remember she brought the Last Poets up to school. And I remember that was. And Sonia Sanchez. Remember that concert where you bought the Last Poets and Sonia Sanchez?

I do.

And that was a huge deal. But I feel like that was really educational for a lot of people. That was really my first time even knowing about the Last Poets was when they came up to campus and then being like, okay, and I actually have that vinyl in the basement. But I never had really paid attention to it like that. And she took me to a Nina Simone concert, her and her dad, at Carnegie Hall. At Carnegie hall, we had box seats. And Santi sold one of those tickets. Remember that?

No.

I was a scalper.

Scalper. Nina Samoa.

Let me tell you what happened. Her dad had an extra ticket, and she thought she was doing something amazing by selling that ticket for the face value. Her dad was like, do you know how much that ticket was worth? And you just sold it to somebody for $100, whatever, dollars. And she was like, what?

That was amazing.

That was, like, a monumental experience, too.

See, Santi planted seeds in people's lives.

That's the thing. I think. Lucky for me, like, all that stuff came from, I guess, the music that I grew up in my household. Like, my dad listened to all kinds of black music, whether it's Fela, whether it's Nina Simone, Last Poets, Burning Spear, Temptations. But then my sister, who was three years older, she started collecting records and brought in everything from, like, Bauhaus to Funboy 3 to Joni Mitchell to Bad Brains to whatever. So I was getting that. And then just living in the world, I was getting all the rap stuff. I was getting the Cure and Talking Heads at my school and even early Beastie Boys. And somehow I just was sitting right in the middle of the full spectrum of what music was out there, and I just absorbed it. I mean, I guess that's who my soul is. Like, I'm an absorber of music. I can't even not take it in. And it just turned into this DNA, this musical DNA of, like, having all these influences.

Can I ask a question, though?

Yeah.

Because I think the four of us have a commonality thing, which I guess the shortest way to word it is we're code switchers. But I just think by nature, every black person in probably the world has to adapt to code switching more than anyone else does, because you have to figure out how to survive in your environment.

Yeah.

So for a lot of us, is the embracement of that in terms of survival or in terms of general interest? Because, like, okay, I love the accolades. Now people are like, oh, Amir, you're like, a savant of music, and you love every. But I grew up in a household where don't touch my stereo was rule number one. I'm the youngest member of the household. And I'm not allowed to touch the stereo. And if I had control the stereo, I probably played Disco Duck all day. Right?

That's why.

Yes, yes.

It's almost Stockholm syndrome. Because I' be honest, like, I hated old music. I hated Marvin Gaye, I hated Phoebe Snow. I hated Joan Armand. Trading, like, anything my sister brought home, it was totally alternative, fitting in with her high school girlfriends. And my dad was like. I mean, he was yacht rock, but even before that was a thing he only listened to name it. Ambrosia, Little River Band, whatever. And my mom was like, she would have been a crate digger, but I couldn't touch the stereo. So thus I was forced to. To listen to that stuff. And then when MTV came along, I was forced to watch all that stuff so that I could watch Beat It. And then once hip hop came along, then it was sort of like the Eureka moment where. Oh, wait a minute. That's when I got interested. Because then there's the other side of the thing where I'm in high school and U2's on the COVID of Time magazine and I don't really care, but, like, I don't want a FOMO moment where, like, everyone's raving about the Joshua Tree and I want to be down, too. So it's like, all right, let me get this tape and see what the rage is all about. So for you guys, is sometimes the embracement of it a general interest or is it survival?

I think it's hard to tell, because.

Even now, like, at my age, should I really be listening to drill music?

Yes, you can listen to anything you want to listen to if you like it. Exactly.

Yes. I want to be older, but I'm listening, listening to drill music because as a businessman, as a dj, I have to know what's next.

That's what I was gonna say. Yeah.

But it's not like, yo, man, this new joint, ooh, this is amazing.

It's like you dropped everything. Like, what is that?

Yeah. And I don't even know if I go by, like, good and amazing anymore more than I go by effective and non effective.

Yeah, I mean, you do need to know what's going on. So again, there is an element of that. And so I agree with you. When you're trying to balance all these different cultural environments. For me, like I said, I was trying to fit in everywhere. And so I wanted to know. The Beatles never really were all the way my thing. But, like, I know the Beatles because everybody's talking about the Beatles, because that's what Their families were playing at my school.

Right.

So who's the Beatles? Okay, we're seeing. Feeling Groovy. Let me learn Feeling Groovy. Okay. You know, like, stuff like that. And so, yes, I did take on some of that, but also in that I was like, ooh, this is really good. And I might not have found this. So it was a real interest that I found from being exposed to stuff that might have been trying to fit in. But then I was like, oh, this shit is great.

I also think sometimes if you hear something enough, you think it's good, even if it's not. That's part of the tricks, too.

Yeah.

Some things you like automatically, and some things you're like, I done heard this song 50 times. And so I guess I like it.

Stockholm Syndrome.

Yeah, I know it.

Yeah. Especially for nostalgia, too. When you think back, like the stuff that I didn't like, the R and B from the 90s, I just was never really into. But now I'm like, oh, because it reminds me of exactly.

A little Debbie Gibson, a little Tiffany.

Yeah, exactly. But one thing I wanted to talk about was something that you mentioned, Angela, was how back then, they really did play everything on the same station. And same with the videos, even though there weren't that many black videos, but they were playing it all together. Well, I talked to Kenny Gamble about this years ago, and it was when I was working at Sony Music, at Epic Records in the black music department, which was still called back then. And all the big artists were not in the black music department that were black, like Michael Jackson, Sade, they were in pop. So the big artists, they're no longer black, they're just pop. But the black artists had to be like hip hop, R and B very specifically. And I was trying to bring people in to get them signed and pushed the box, and they were like, are you crazy? Did Puffy not produce them? And I was like, huh? And that was it. Kenny Gamble was saying that in the 70s, they pushed for black music departments. They were like, we need to have black music departments so that we have more opportunity and focus on our music. But he said later, he said that was one of the biggest mistakes that he ever made because he didn't realize what it was going to become. It became a box. Like, black people couldn't make music outside of this genre. It has been something that has been really, really hard to break free of.

It's weird that you mentioned that what Kenny Gamble was talking about. Well, it's a book called the Harvard Report. And so in 1969, Harvard University decided to do a study of mom and pop labels and how they're dissolving and how major labels need to invest in what you mentioned, like a black music department. I'm actually reading that book right now. It's called the Harvard Report of Black Music. It was sort of like the bible that every major label back in the 70s used in terms of integrating labels. And of course, Clive Davis was the first one to say, hey, let's start a black major label division that could rival Motown. So thus like giving Kenny Gamble his own label. And you're right, I guess the part that was missing was them integrating together. But unfortunately, along with the labels like radio and the other outlets weren't as forward thinking. And I believe that's how the stalling happened because Radio wasn't as open. MTV will also tell you that we want it to be a hard rock format. And it took the same label to threaten mtv. We'll take all of our videos away if you don't start playing Michael Jackson, you know, and then that's when that happened.

What's also interesting about the labels becoming like the keepers of what is black music and what isn't, it's really played into the state that we're in now with the commodification of music in general. But it is also like basically being in charge of what the cultural messages that get put out are. Where if you're talking about drugs and women and asses, sure, that sells. We're gonna put that out. But if you're talking about like the state of culture and progress or thoughtful things or anything that doesn't sell, we're not interested in putting that out. So you get this version of music coming from black people that is not a holistic and realistic view of what black people are thinking and talking about. But because the labels decided that if you're talking about this it's not sellable, then they're actually controlling culture in that way, which is a dangerous, dangerous situation.

I feel like labels aren't as important anymore. What do you think, Amir?

I think we have to have a conversation about dismantling labels, which I don't know if in my lifetime we will truly know what freedom is in terms of like product distribution. If you decide, Santi, to make a new album and we have to come directly to your website to exclusively get it, you control it and you can make tangible versions of it and you sell it yourself. I long for the day where that can happen.

I mean, I think it's coming With Web three, to be honest, the whole like direct to consumer idea, if it really pans out, which I think it really is a viable idea, I think.

It'S here, but I don't know if it'll be perfected. You know, it's almost like the first version of the iPhone. Yeah, of course now we're in version like what, 14? But it takes a while, you know, hopefully the cycle to perfection where there's true artistic freedom. I have a friend, Fonte, who's in a group called Little Brother. Now, even though Little Brother isn't a household name like Fonte's very influential, like Drake has gone on record by basically saying that Fonte has always been my north star as far as a rapper who got bars and can also sing well. And they were kind of first out the gate with really using the Internet as their platform. They're the first Internet rap group. They made their beats on fruity loops. Like everything that everyone's doing now, they were doing back in like 2004, 2005. Not that I'm going to use monetary means as a level of success, but he makes a great living and only sells maybe somewhere between 20 to 50,000 units of his product. But he has a built in fan base that supports him and hopefully one day we'll get to the place where that model will be perfected and it's not such a struggle.

We have to. Because right now it is so unsustainable, honestly, for artists like us especially now that music is basically free and people just expect it.

Like they expect, you know, utilities.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like it will be there for us for free. So when you're an artist that is finding it hard to get support because you're not making things that they think is what black people want to hear or what anybody wants to hear, it's really hard to continue to make art.

It's a slot unless whatever you're sliding into that is formatted to work in that machine because it fits, you're going to have a really, really hard time. I was talking to a friend. Well, we were talking about TV on the radio. And I was saying to them, okay, we had, I think three songs that actually were on the the radio. And it's because they were the texture and the form of mid 2000s indie rock with electronic elements. The texture and the form mapped onto a pop song form that's 3 minutes and 30 seconds is going to fit somewhere. But still not for everybody. I was talking to them about what I call Frisbee music. Frisbee music is pop music. It's round, it's red. You can throw it into a crowd and anybody can catch it. And it's light, and it doesn't mean anything. You throw it to somebody else. Da, da, da. But I think that we make. I know you make music and I make music, and maybe we're all trying to make music that has something inside that Frisbee that might make it sometimes makes it difficult for people to catch racers. Exactly. You have to cloak it somehow for it to get through there, but otherwise it doesn't fit into the same six songs every summer. It's harder for people who aren't doing that.

I feel like it's really hard to just be an artist now, too. It feels like for artists, you have to also make sure you have your social media following going. You have to make sure you have your merch going. You have to make sure you have all these other things happening in order for you to be marketable.

Yeah. To be a presence.

Yeah.

The music is just like a side note.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just you juggling so many balls just trying to, like, get notice that making music is not even a real career option anymore as, like, a sole thing that you can do. But, Angela, you know, I want to know what your experience has been like from being on the radio on an urban station that plays a lot of black artists, but you can't even, like, play something that doesn't fit specifically, like the programming playlist and what it's been like for you.

Oh, we don't choose what gets played on the radio at all. So the way the system works is there's a program director, they have meetings, they program the music. And it's all very based on when do people tune in and when do people tune out. That's why you might hear the same.

Song over and over again.

They assume that people listen to the radio for, like, a little chunk of time, but not for hours or all day. And people want to hear their favorite song over and over and over again. So if a song tests well, they'll play it every hour on the hour. And then it doesn't give much of a chance for newer artists to get played or people who aren't familiar. And if somebody tunes out, they're like, okay, that song is not going to work because people tuned out. And so it is all about, like, making sure that the listeners stay and keep coming back. And that's why a lot of times it's kind of later. Cause we have streaming Services now, something we didn't have before, where people can create their own playlists, do whatever they want with music, and listen to what they want to listen to, even if it's not being played on the radio and we're very late to catch up to what is being listened to. There's albums that do amazing. You know, Brent Faies is going to have, like, the number one album, and I don't think we play his music. You know, he's an amazing artist. I think he's independent too, or NBA. YoungBoy is a great example of somebody who is huge on YouTube, huge with the kids, but they really don't play him on the radio. What we play on the radio is not necessarily a reflection of what can be really successful.

There's two crucial elements that haven't been mentioned. I think being a tastemaker is almost like being assistant coach, which is really. Is in a glamorous position to be in. You know, I grew up in an era where whenever I would go to, like, Sound of Market record store, and I want to know what's dope. There's that guy, the nerdy comic book guy that works at the. Com. But the record version of that, that works at the record store, that knows lives there. Yeah. That knows what's up. Or the DJ that you previously trusted to play something that's like, oh, what is that? Because now the gates are wide open for everyone to walk through. And that sort of makes it a crowded atmosphere because again, for one artist of quality, there are also six or seven artists of diminished returns.

That's putting it. That's being kind. I'm gonna say.

I'm being so diplomatic right now.

Six or seven, like 50,000, maybe.

Also diminished returns is a very kind way to put it.

Here's a weird thing. When your album first came out, Santi, or your Santi Gold album came out, ye really thought he had one up on me. He and I would always do this thing where it's sort of like, all right, who's the smartest guy in the room? Like, whatever. And. And when it came to music, he was like, yo. And he described you as like, yo, this is some next shit. Like, you don't know about this shit.

And this bird from London.

Right?

That's what he said.

Right? Exactly. The joy I felt being silent for that good half hour while he just exhausted himself on something he thought he was up on. But, like, the age of the blog is sort of past us. Like, no one blocks anymore, because you could just put your thoughts on social Media. I mean, I follow like maybe 30 people on social media that literally feed me stuff that I'm not up on. But I think that Tastemaker is almost like far and few between.

I think podcasting is good for that. I'm not saying every podcast, but there are some podcasts that are pretty good at, you know, exposing you to newer artists.

Right.

But it just takes so much work. Like me, I don't have a lot of time. I got a lot of kids and I just like.

Wait, how many kids you got? Sign?

Three. Amir. I got three.

God damn.

I had twins. You didn't know that?

I didn't know they were twins. I thought you.

It happened fast.

I thought you were singular, Mom.

Yeah, I was one. And then look.

Boom. Aw.

One thing that I want to talk about too, guys, is the experience of what it's like to be making this music. Because Tunde, you mentioned this earlier that black people don't really listen to and what that experience is like. Especially Amir, you when you did the Summer of Soul documentary, and there was the one part where it was talking about the one where Age of Aquarius.

Fifth dimension.

Yes, fifth dimension. And they were talking about it and they were like, black people didn't really like us. And we were the most nervous because this was a black audience. And I think that's like a really interesting phenomenon. I just was doing some sort of demographics research and saw that it said 64% of my fan base is white. And I was like, damn, that kind of hurt my heart a little bit. I mean, I come from black people and my experience is black. And it's like, I want black people to be influenced and inspired by what I'm serving out.

You know, I think Wu Tang would say the same. Maybe the Roots also, you know, maybe.

At first I used to really take that to heart. Like, Tariq especially was wondering, like, wait a minute, how come our audience really isn't reflecting? Of course, you know, who's on stage? And he was really taking that personal, like for a good 20 year stretch. We discovered maybe around 2005 that a lot of that also has to do with an economical situation.

And who has the money to go to the concert.

Yeah, who has spare $200 to go to a concert? Which is kind of why. And not to self promote. The thing that I'm proudest about with the Roots Picnic. Now, yes, this is the first year that we had to go slightly north of $100 for a ticket. But we wanted to provide a grade A level festival experience that you don't have to pay Coachella money. When you're paying like, 700, $800 for a festival, it's ridiculous.

That's how much Coachella costs.

That's insane.

Yeah, you're paying anywhere between $500 to about $3,000 to go to Coachella right now. We've started to do things where kind of in a Robin Hood way, where, yes, we will do the high price ticket thing. Cause look, we've been here for 30 years. Like, okay, it's time for us to make a living. But we also pay it forward by doing, like, the opposite show and doing way cheaper shows to be more effective to reach black people. I know that when Tariq went to South Africa, that's the first thing he insisted on, because he went over there and the entire audience is white. He's like, wait, where the. I'm in Africa. Where's the black people?

What?

They were like, oh, they can't afford tickets.

Oh, that's heavy.

Yeah, yeah, that's crazy. That must have been really disappointing.

And he was like, well, I want to do a free show for black people. We worked very hard to change the demographic of what the Roots Picnic was. The Roots Picnic sort of in the beginning, leaned very. To paraphrase it, very Pitchforkian. A little Vampire Weekend here, a little Wayne there. You know, that sort of thing. Just at this last picnic, Tierra Whack was kind of feeling a little down. Cause this was Philly's first look at Tierra Whack and who's a brilliant fucking artist. Brilliant. And I explained to her, like, look, this is your introduction. I know that you're used to a certain energy from your crowd that already knows you, but this is your chance to introduce yourself to your people. And she was a little taken back by how cool they were. And I was like, well, this is the first time you're meeting. Like, no one's gonna open their heart to you in the first five seconds, so it's gonna take time.

Well, that's another thing, too. It's like, if they're playing the same songs every five minutes and that's what people are getting fed, then that's what they want. You know, if you grow up eating McDonald's every day, that's what you want. You know what I'm saying? And I think that's part of it. It's like, people don't want this kind of music because they don't hear this kind of music. They don't know this kind of music. Like, think about in the 90s, right? Hip hop, for example, Everybody was talking about something. It was so socially conscious. It was great.

And we wanted it.

Everybody wanted. Because that's what we were being given. That's what was out there. That's what people. You knew. You couldn't come out there as a rapper not talking about anything.

Right.

That was the norm. But I think part of the problem is it's not the norm now to have substance in the music.

I also feel like that was still maybe the tail end of where it was a crime to sound like anyone else.

Right.

Oh, to be derivative.

To be derivative or to even come close to it, where now I feel like it's. The format that fits into the machine is like, oh, this fits. This is this long. This has these sounds in it. That's.

Yeah, I have a theory. And this is the main lesson that I learned in the pandemic. Now it's very hard for me, especially, like, in this being the 30th year that I've been doing this, to not become, like, part of the system that I'm trying to rage against. However, the first year that Tariq and I started, it was us living in our heart. It was a joy. It was, like, fun to do. You could never told me on south street, as we're dividing up $115 between the four of us, I know those days. Yeah, that one day, like, the world's gonna be your oyster. And what's really weird is that it took the movie for me to realize what's been missing in my life. And the thing is, general, for black people, no matter how much we admit it or not, we live in a perpetual state of fight or flight.

Survival.

And survival is always first. The amount of times an artist has come to me and says, man, I envy y' all because y' all get to do what y' all want, and y' all don't have to worry about da, da, da, da da. And, you know, the average artist is thinking about, I can get dropped any moment. There was a part of my career which, when I was making records, and even though, like, I always knew, like, no matter what happens, I'll be fine, because that's just in my nature. But there was a time where it was like, oh, we must sell a certain amount, or this new label president, who doesn't know us from Jack, just might drop us. And once we got out of the circle where I didn't need that record deal to survive anymore, then suddenly there was a freedom there. And what's so weird With Summer of Soul. Is that the imagined victory lap, whatever. That scene in Pee Wee's Playhouse where he's, like, having the ticket tape parade because he won that bike race. It's so weird that it took the movie for me to have what I always wanted for my music career. And that's the thing. I don't want to be the artist that's so, like, nihilistic. Like, oh, I don't care about those things. And yeah, but every artist dreams about putting out something in the world. In the world.

Embraces it in real time, get recognized for it. Yeah.

It mind me for like, four months. Like, wait, why are all my dreams coming true with the movie? But I cannot do this shit with one tangible record. And at the time, my ex girlfriend was like, well, because you were living in your heart, remember? Like, you woke up every day and you were excited, like, oh, my God, we're going to talk to Stevie Wonder today. And it was fun. You weren't thinking about, okay, this is my third single. And if I get da da da for the remix, and if I can da da da on a hook, that's how a survivor thinks. A brain person. And I've always been a brain person. Where's my safety? What's going to get me from point A to point B? Safety. Once we get in the place where we really create from our hearts and live in our truth, then that's when the doors open.

Amir, I wanted to just touch on what you said about living in a state of survival. This is something that we've learned for generations. And it's in our bodies in a way that's not healthy. And the way that we compartmentalize our feelings and life just so we can keep going. And. And it's all stuff that we've been taught and it's been mirrored for us for generations, from our families, our ancestors. And I'm interested in how to let go of all that stuff and really just figure out the way towards individual freedom. I think what's really important about that is what you said about living in your heart, Bringing something into the world that you want to bring in. Especially now when there's just so much heaviness and so much that's challenging. And it's like to be able to create beauty and to create light and then move towards that beauty is such an important thing to be able to do. And that's why I think it's so important for artists like us. And look what you guys said in the very beginning about Prince, about all these Artists who came before us about bad brains, whoever. There's so many people who have pioneered before, whether it's Chuck Berry, whether it's Jimi Hendrix, so many people who pioneered in these spaces.

Fishbone.

They've little by little, just kind of opened up doors, little doors, you know, because we keep having to keep pushing, but we've made it far. The influence that it has on culture, when you refuse to be shut down, to be darkened by somebody else's cloud or ceiling over you, you can break through and just find light. Just seek light by continuing to be.

Who you are, finding out who you.

Are by finding out who you are and not letting anybody dictate what that's supposed to be for you because of what you look like or where you were born or how much money you have. And I think the cultural legacy of living your truth in that way is the legacy of some of these black artists who have just bucked in the face of conformity. And then also what's interesting is, like, when the white artists have done this in the past, they've been celebrated, whether it's Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin or the Rolling Stones, obviously, who have always drawn from blues or R B. And people were like, oh, they're so brilliant. You know, they've gone against racial conformity and they've created masterpieces, but when black people do it, they're like, they're not black enough. Yeah, like, I had talked to Darryl, Jennifer last week, actually. He was telling an interesting story about how he used to see Basquiat walking down the street and how he used to give him a hard time because he said he was another guy with dreads. And he said basquiat used to kind of look away and run when he saw them. And I was like, well, why would.

You give him a hard time?

And I'm not gonna say what he said, but he was just like. He said we just yell shit at him. I was like, no wonder he said, Cuz, you know, I was on my, like, roster.

Shit.

And like, you see a dread and they don't say anything or whatever. And I was like, but can you imagine what it must have been like for him? Clearly, really not all fitting in with Andy Warhol, right? And then seeing you guys actually other black people doing some crazy shit too, but then you guys yelling rude shit and he's running from you. And then Daryl was like, yeah, I used to get called Elvis for wearing leather pan. And I'm like, we're all living in these tiny little isolated bubbles trying to do these crazy balancing acts as, I don't know, you want to call it alternative, which I think is just bullshit because it implies that there is a norm, you know, but, like, we just all doing these balancing acts where it's like we're so isolated when we find each other. It's like such an amazing feeling just even talking to you guys now to just find community. And I think that's what is so important about doing a podcast like this is because there's so many more of us and then there's generations of new people like us that need to hear the experience and need to know that we're out here.

And we just saw that with Lil Nas X at the Country Music Awards and how they were so upset that he could even get nominated for an award. They tried to say it wasn't country until Billy Ray Cyrus got on the song. And then all of a sudden it was okay.

No, that's a perfect example. It was just, like, blasphemous to have this black kid and they would let him come out and say he's gay on top of it. They were like, what is going.

That was my favorite Elmer Fudd style trap. The box with the stick on it. Lil Nas X just being like. Just like, oh, I'm just country. I'm doing my thing. Step under my box now. I did that. It's history. It's there. It's in the books.

It's amazing.

You can't take that away.

Exactly. You really shook people up. People were pissed. Pissed.

Do you know Ada Victoria, she basically plays. It's bluegrass. She calls it Music of the South. But she also has gone up against these super racist country stars who've, you know, like, the little bit of shine she's gotten.

Hey, wait till they find out we invented the banjo.

Country music, it's like just heads exploding. Yeah, country music, but everything.

Even with Drake and Beyonce doing their dance songs now.

But people were mad when Drake made a dance record, right?

Yeah, they didn't. But, you know, that is. And maybe it's the statement, but techno music came from black people, too. Everything.

And there's also implied homophobic issues, too, that black people also have to come to grips too, as well with.

With house music.

Yeah. Because just in general, I think that the white elephant in the room, especially with the Drake record, is that oftentimes hip hop is used as a tool to enforce a certain hyper, masculine, adrenalized feeling when you want to feel black or tough. I'm dating myself with the age, but you know, you'll put on a DMX record and drive 100 miles per hour. And there's really nothing about Drake's record that makes you want to smack somebody in the face, you know? I want to say one thing. Tunde. Yeah. I want to thank you so much, man. You don't even know this. You made my dream come true in a weird, ironic way. I was backstage at Summer Stage, and this was, like, 2008. I'm backstage watching, and this hand hits me on the shoulder, and I turn around, and David Bowie gives me the world's biggest hug.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

And him and Iman are next to each other.

That's all.

That's crazy. And he just says, yo, man, I gotta tell you, every day I listen to Wolf. Me Return to Cookie Mountain is one of my favorite records ever. Congratulations. And no, I. I sat there frozen. No, this is not the first time I've been Kip Malone. And so I sat there frozen for, like, five seconds.

And he said, thank you.

And you. Yo, yo. I literally said thank you.

That is so rough. Oh, rough moment.

Oh, man, I know.

Your heart just dropped. That's crazy.

A rough moment.

Nah, B, I was TV on the radio for all of three minutes backstage at Central Park. Boy, it's cool.

That's hilarious. I'm here.

All right. Thank you guys so much. That was Angela, Yee, Tunde, Adebempe, and Questlove. This was amazing. I'm back in the next episode with actor and director Olivia Wilde and author, activist, and artist Rebecca Walker to talk about what it's like being a creative and a mother. Until then, bye.