QuestloveRecensioni

This is an absolutely gorgeous book. It has over 350 huge color photographs from the 1970s through 1990s. An amazing chronicle of a wildly influential piece of popular culture. I would definitely recommend it for anyone with an interest in music, dance, or fashion.

A delightful completely idiosyncratic document of not just Questlove's journey but of soul and hip-hop from the 1970's through the aughts. Q is a great tour guide: He is vulnerable, arrogant, brilliant, weird, loving, opinionated, and most importantly for these purposes unfailingly interesting. Also, that man just grew my liked songs on Spotify like kudzu (but good kudzu.) His taste is as broad as can be and his knowledge base is awe-inspiring and so I happily follow.

A very interesting memoir, including structurally, but my knowledge of hip-hop just wasn't adequate for me to appreciate it. I would definitely recommend to hip-hop fans though.

A music focused overview of US history from the ‘70s through to the pandemic years. The first part of the book delivers on what its title promises but the second part slips into the author’s professional life to the point that it becomes more memoir than history. That's not a problem since his knowledge and opinions about the music he writes about are just shared from a more personal perspective. The author’s name, Questlove, is one I was only familiar with in the context of the house band on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night shows. It turns out the band itself has won several Grammy awards under the R&B and Rap categories and those are the genres that figure heavily in the book’s musical references. My copy was the audiobook version which was read by the author – not always a good thing – but in this case I doubt anyone else could have done it half as well.

A musical journey where the author, Questlove, uses the music that has been important to him to explain the history of the last fifty years. A nice mix of genres although it spends a bit too much time on hip-hop and rap.

I was only familiar with Questlove via the presence of The Roots as the band on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and his Oscar-winning documentary "Summer of Soul". His musical memoire was thoughtful, though not very deep. It's more about the music than him. It helped me understand hip hop and its roots a bit better.

This is one of the best books on creativity I've ever read. It's right up there with Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.

Ah, Questlove rocks my world. I have always loved his musicianship, but this book is a testament to his deep love of music origins and the part it is has played culturally and historically over the years. I am about the same age and I agreed with so many of his thoughts, but was also schooled on how to look at certain music and its influences. I created a playlist for all of the songs he talks about and loved listening to it with his thoughts in mind. Lovers of contemporary music history of the past 50 years or so should check this out.

In this, Questlove details the link between music and history. Both how it relates to world history, as well as his own personal history, going year by year of his life to explain historical and musical events. Sometimes it can be a bit rambly, I wish it were more focused at times. I was also a little disappointed that the last 20 years (the most relevant to me) were condensed to one single chapter.

He has great tastes, and I've been exploring a LOT of new albums because of him, there are over 500 songs mentioned in this book.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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His dad. He was walking and talking with his dad. And his dad was...kinda cool? Rahim didn't know what was more shocking—the fact he had traveled back in time or that his dad was once actually pretty fun to be around.

WHAT'S THE RHYTHM OF TIME ABOUT?
Kasia is a homeschool nerd/computer genius. Her parents run a vegan co-op and help community gardens throughout the city. They know she's smarter than them, but they also know they don't fully appreciate how much smarter she is. For example, she's designed a drone that can adapt, speak, and add features as it sees fit. She's also made a (admittedly unattractive) smartphone for her best friend so he can call her and do homework.

Rahim lives next door to her and to call his father a Luddite is to understate things—and it'd probably result in a lecture from him about the inaccuracy of using the term for him. He's a history professor who won't allow computers, etc. in his home—his encyclopedias are good enough for Rahim's homework, thank you very much*. He's not that crazy about Rahim's love of music or sports, either.

* Sure, it's impossible in 2023 for even a grade school student to do homework without the Internet, we all know that. Shhh. Roll with it for the purposes of the book.

Rahim is overjoyed with his gift (although he does make a crack about its looks) and starts to use it right away. It takes him very little time to see that if he does things in a certain way, the phone will transport him instantly to various places. Kasia doesn't understand that, but before she can figure out how that happens, Rahim discovers (the hard way) that the phone also works to send him to the past.

While Kasia tries to figure out how to get him home, she tells him to keep from interacting with anyone as much as possible. She starts trying to see what the satellites she hacked into to give Rahim his phone are doing to him and Rahim sees a kid about his age being bullied and before common sense can restrain him, he intervenes and saves the kid. The bullied kid turns out to be Omar, or as Rahim calls him, "Dad."

Oops.

And well...things get worse from there.

THE TAKE ON TIME TRAVEL

Time itself is being pulled and stretched, and I'm kinda afraid it's gonna crumble like graham crackers dunked in milk.

Like any self-respecting time-travel story, particularly one where the traveler meets a relative, things start to unravel—the timeline, future events, etc. And not just in the expected ways—the first sign we have that anything's going wrong is that a different team wins the '97 NBA Championship. There's no relation to anyone in the book to anyone in the NBA (that the reader knows of), so the problems in the timeline aren't starting out in the typical way. The authors deserve some big points for that.

Nor do the time travel-induced anomalies continue to play out the way they usually do. It's when things are nearing their worst that Kasia says that about graham crackers in milk (a visual that has stuck with me for days).

(Mild Spoilers ahead in this paragraph) Some things remain constant—Rahim's parents still get together and live next to Kasia and her family. Kasia's just as smart, too (thankfully). And just when you start to think that maybe, just maybe, we're going to get a Back to the Future kind of ending where things went differently for Rahim's father and he found a different kind of success—but Rahim (for reasons you might not expect) decides to try a plan-so-crazy-that-it-just-might-work to restore the timeline. Emphasis on the might.

THE GOVERNMENT TYPES
Disrupting, disturbing, distracting, and potentially disabling Kasia's efforts are a couple of government agents. They seem like moderately overzealous, humorless types who are trying to do their job—if it happens to allow them to bully a little girl, so be it.

Eventually, however, these agents prove to be better than we think. In doing so they show that some of the government assets that Kasia has been, um, "helping" herself to aren't exactly what she thinks they are. In fact, there's a connection between them and The Philadelphia Experiment. But we're not just treated to the typical urban legend version of the Philadelphia Experiment, Questlove and Cosby give the reader a Hidden Figures version of it. Which makes it all the more fun.

But just because there are all sorts of adults running around with official powers and equipment, don't think that it all doesn't come down to what Kasia and Rahim do. This is a Middle-Grade novel, after all.

SO, WHAT DID I THINK ABOUT THE RHYTHM OF TIME?
It just felt so odd to be having so much fun on just about every page with Cosby's name on the cover. I enjoy his stuff, but it's not often that "fun" enters into the conversation. And fun is the best word to describe this.

The whole concept and the way it plays out are ridiculous—but they're entertaining, and if you can accept any part of it, you'll accept it all. And there's no reason not to suspend your disbelief enough to buy into the story—because it's not trying to be more than a fun adventure for grade school readers.* So just sit back, relax, grab some popcorn, and enjoy.

* Even if it had higher aspirations, you could still make the case for going along with things.

Rahim's a great guy, and you can see where Omar ends up becoming the Dad that he is—and how his parents become the versions of themselves Rahim would come to know as his grandparents. All of that was really well done.

Kasia is the type of impossible genius making tech in her bedroom that has been the stuff of cartoons and Middle-Grade fiction since I was reading it (when it was called "Juvenile Fiction.") Think Flavia de Luce meets Penny from Inspector Gadget meets Richie Foley (from Static Shock). I will read something about her anytime. If Rahim's along for the ride, so much the better.

The book ends with a clear sign that the story goes on, but none of the online sources I see refer to this as the first of a series. I hope it does go on—but it's also one of those endings that doesn't require a sequel. We know that Rahim and Kasia are going to be up to more adventures, and in a way, that's enough. By this point, the reader has enough to know how their adventures will go.

But I really hope the series keeps going.

Pick this up for some nice, uncomplicated fun for yourself or grab it for the Middle Schooler in your life (and then borrow it).½

I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this juvenile fiction middle grade sci-fi novel by Questlove and S A Cosby so much!

Right up my alley, with girl STEM power, time travel, music and all the 1990s references.

First in a series (I hope).

Questlove’s memoir of his life in music and the role of hip-hop in pop culture. He describes the roots (pardon the pun) of hip hop in jazz and blues. Along the way, he provides a history of hip-hop, and his reactions to many of the seminal acts. Toward the end, he discusses his band’s role in the Jimmy Fallon show. All this is done in the manner of an “anti-memoir.” He definitely did not want to create a straight-forward chronology or anything dry, and he succeeded.

The Roots are self-described nerds and intellectuals. They go against the grain of mainstream commercialism and gangster posing of some of the well-known artists. Questlove is candid about the fine line between producing hits and being true to an artistic vision. The Roots tend to err on the side of the latter. He speaks of the tensions introduced by corporate labels trying to impose a direction.

In case you are wondering, the book’s title is a take-off on Spike Lee’s 1990 film Mo’ Better Blues. I consider myself a fan of The Roots and own some of their songs. I enjoyed reading Questlove’s opinions. I found it creative and enlightening.

Memorable quotes:

“I worry that it’ll be harder for the present generation to process memory, because they have so many options to choose from, and most aren’t shared in a physical space.”

“When you believe that something is special, how many people do you want on your bandwagon? Too few and you martyr yourself. Too many and the axle snaps and the whole thing breaks down.”

“How do you measure your own small life next to monumental historical events?”

“I feel like my cultural value comes from my role as a bridge. My job is to connect brilliant have-nots to the land of haves.”

I delight. I wish I had read it with the spotify playlist open.

I just could not focus on this book. It was an interesting concept but I got lost between Questlove's switching back and forth between historical facts, historical theory, musical history and musical theory.

I’m thrilled to have gotten early access to this fascinating and delightful book about connections between popular music and history. Read my full review here.

#MusicIsHistory #NetGalley #RBMedia

2021 movie #123. 2021. Lost for over 50 yrs, footage from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival in 1969. Put together by Questlove drummer for the Tonight Show band, The Roots. Great film although I'd have preferred more music and less contemporary interviews over the music. On Hulu.

I've never seen an episode, and I don't know a lot of the names, but there's nothing better than reading an author who's truly, deeply in love with their subject. Questlove bangs it out in short bursts, giving you a history of black music from Motown to LL Cool J. It seems like if you search any song he mentions in here, you'll recognize it from a sample in hip hop (especially Bad Boy songs). Yep, this gave me a musical education. It also gave me a look into the pre-hip hop world where hardness wasn't the rule, where innocence and fun were more on display.

I can't tell you how many times I stopped reading to youtube a Soul Train episode he was talking about.

The book does start to get a little repetitive in it's short profiles and constant episode recaps, but like I said, it's done with so much love it's still a joy to read.

How can a man in his early forties hope to really talk about his life as a whole? It’s like reviewing the first half of a song.

While this faux-memoir by Questlove, part founder, drummer, songwriter and tastemaker in The Roots, one of the most influential bands to come out of the USA in the R&B/hip-hop movements, is loose, conjoined and at its worst rushed and unhinged, that is also its main strength; early in the book, Questlove questions (pun not intended) the absence of comments from others in autobiographies, so his manager and his editor comment throughout, in the form of footnotes; for instance:

SEVEN
From: Ben Greenman [cowriter]
To: Ben Greenberg [editor]
Re: Refining the approach
No. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the book is coming into better focus, though I would say that my excitement over the nature of the blurriness is increasing.

The book is stacked with interesting anecdotes from throughout his 40-ish-old life:

I was in the bathtub and didn’t want to stay there. What kid does? I came running out of the bathroom into the living room and I fell toward the radiator, which branded me. For the next sixteen years of my life, there was a train-track-like burn from the radiator right up the outside of my leg. Anyway, at that very moment, Curtis Mayfield was doing “Freddie’s Dead” on the TV. And not just “Freddie’s Dead,” but one specific part of the song, the modulated bridge where the horns come in. Even now, when I hear it, it traumatizes me. There’s nothing technically scary about it, but it’s forever welded to the memory of falling into the radiator. I’m not the only one with that kind of association. D’Angelo told me that to this day, he cannot listen to Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” without feeling terror. That’s strange to me, because when I hear that song I think of yuppies singing it in The Big Chill, reliving their youthful optimism. It’s a light song for me, a party song, frothy. But for him, it’s a dark place, and I’m not sure he even knows why. It’s related to something in his childhood, something buried deep. I even tested him during the Voodoo tour. We were backstage, with people milling around, and I put it on the radio. He immediately stiffened, turned around, and said “Take that thing off.”

It might’ve been ’79, but the seventies were like the aberrant child of the sixties. And 1979 was the year that the seventies left home, not just literally, but also in a spiritual sense. Gone was the existential longing that you could find at the core of songs like “Dock of the Bay,” “What’s Going On,” or “Higher Ground.” I figure it this way: when Sam Cooke sang “a change is gonna come,” I didn’t foresee that change being one that would allow for niggas to be rapping about “busting bitches out wit dey super sperm.”

Questlove's honesty plays well into the book:

I was and am so devoted to the review process that I write the reviews for my own records. Almost no one knows this, but when I am making a Roots record, I write the review I think the album will receive and lay out the page just like it’s a Rolling Stone page from when I was ten or eleven. I draw the cover image in miniature and chicken-scratch in a fake byline. It’s the only way I really know how to imagine what I think the record is. And as it turns out, most of the time the record ends up pretty close to what I say it is in the review.

He's questioning things in an interesting way at times:

He told me that I was a man out of time. He wondered if I was trying to be white. Trying to be white? What the hell does that mean? I’ve never understood that. How could anyone be white when they aren’t white? Seems like a simple enough thing to prove, right? Hold out your arm next to someone else’s arm and do a simple swatch test. Of course, what people mean when they say that is that there’s some kind of authentic black experience that the accused isn’t properly expressing. But what is the authentic experience? Clothes that wannabe gangbangers wear on the street? Hood style? What’s authentic about that? For that matter, is fashion even a good marker of authenticity or race, anyway? Aren’t clothes a second skin you wear over your real skin to obscure who you really are? Can they also express who you really are? My mother told me that you had to go to thrift shops to find your own style, which made more sense than going to stores, but weren’t both forms of borrowing where you were always aspiring to have something that was truly your own? The question marks were piling up and I wasn’t even ?uestlove yet.

Yeah, very honest about his growing up:

I knew that my dad kept at least $4,000 hidden in the library. I figured, I’m just going to take a twenty. A perfect crime. I took twenty-five instead. I supposed I would get The Jacksons Live! and then Voices by Hall and Oates and a Rick Springfield record, because there was a girl I knew who liked him. My plan failed. My dad was a meticulous counter. He even knew how many inches high the orange juice was in the jug, so he could tell when someone had drunk some. I had been disciplined with whippings throughout my life, but when he found out I had taken the money it was that and then some, a Kunta Kinte/Django Unchained–like whipping. That incident set the course for our relationship and how it remains today. My father and I are not particularly close. It’s strained at best.

And stuff from the start of The Roots:

But underneath the sense of adventure, it was kind of a dark time. For starters, Tariq and I had our very first real fight. It was a fistfight over a production faux pas. As it turned out, he was not credited for producing the title cut, “Do You Want More?!!!??!” It was neglect on my part and Rich’s part, just an oversight, nothing intentional, but he took it personally. He felt like maybe he was being squeezed out of the group. He confronted me and we went at it in the hallway, shoulder to shoulder. No one got hurt, really. It devolved into wrestling pretty fast. He got up and marched off in what looked like triumph. “I’m not hurt,” he said. I didn’t know until later that he went off down the hall and then snuck around a door so he could sit down on a chair and recover. I’d like to say that the wounds from that fight healed up right away, but the fact is that that was a fight so dark and so deep that I believe it affects us to this day. There’s still an invisible wedge. That fight made me more insular and introverted, more careful around everyone.

There were a hundred people on the floor, dancing, having fun, but the second “Distortion to Static” came on over the speakers, the whole place just cleared. There was only one girl left, out there on her own, trying, unsuccessfully, to dance to it. Tariq looked at Rich, panic in his eyes. “We’re going to fucking fail!” he said. I only heard about it later, on the telephone (a dreadful conversation that I recorded and would, fourteen years later, use as the opening of our Rising Dawn album), but to this day I can’t play the Roots in one of my own DJ sets. The memory of that empty floor is too traumatic.

After I got my advance for Do You Want More?!!!??!, my father came to me and told me that I owed him. I was confused. “You owe me,” he said, “for all those years in private school, all those lessons. I sacrificed for you. I want a cut.” I gave him the money, but it broke my mom’s heart to see me handing it over. She thought that a father was just supposed to do those things for a child without asking for something in return.

The manager, on The Roots playing with The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion:

Remember that? Dude had a motorcycle jacket and a fucking theremin.

And yeah, what is blackness, by the way?

Somehow, I got word that D’Angelo was in the audience that night, and I realized that it was one of those make-or-break moments. I wanted him to know that he and I spoke the same musical language, that we could communicate telepathically via some African tribal shit.

And easily, on what differs old-skool hip-hop from the newer stuff:

Before that, hip-hop had a sense of belonging. When Run DMC did “My Adidas,” you could go out and get a pair of Adidas. You could put on jeans and a Kangol hat. You could be part of that club. When motherfuckers are talking about buying a jet or a speedboat, well, that’s not inclusive. And think of where the videos are set. Early on there was lots of on-your-block shit, videos with regular locations: street corners, houses, empty lots. People could identify with that in ways they couldn’t identify with mansions.

On meeting his main hero, Prince, the second time around:

When I got back, Prince had the briefcase out on the floor. He clicked the lock and opened it, and took out the strangest, most singular pair of roller skates I had ever seen. They were clear skates that lit up, and the wheels sent a multicolored spark trail into your path. He took them out and did a big lap around the rink. Man. He could skate like he could sing. I watched him go, so transfixed that I didn’t even notice Eddie Murphy appearing at my arm. “I’m going to go get your phone for you,” he said. Roller-skating at Prince’s party was cool. Watching Prince roller-skate was cooler.

On the whole: readable, but not a massive thing. On the other hand, it's not pretentious, which I think may be translatable to The Roots as a whole.

This was well written and interesting. There were times when my mind wandered while reading it. I think I would have appreciated it more if I was more familiar with hip-hop artists and other aspects of the history of music from the last few decades. It is obvious that Questlove loves his art and really knows his stuff.½

Three and a half.

Read this memoir while listening to all the songs/albums Questlove mentions. He probably knows what he's talking about.

Creative Quest

I Picked Up This Book Because: Curiosity

The Story:

This book is like a class on creativity. What is it, the habits of people who have it. What you can do to get it, increase it, evolve it. As with any class I’ve ever taken there were some very interesting parts and some parts that I completely tuned out. I like to think there were more of the former but don’t ask me for specific examples.

A lot of Questlove’s learning and teachings on the subject obviously were learned from someone who creates music, however, he does explore in to the creativity of writers, chefs and even comedians. I think this book would be beneficial for anyone who is in a creative field but also anyone who is trying to figure out how they can think differently about any subject.

This is one of those books that I think you read, you try to apply it to life then you read again to see how well you interpreted it and if you need to adjust. Or maybe you will get a completely new lesson in the reread.

The Random Thoughts:

3.5 Stars½

something to food about by Questlove falls into many different categories. It is a coffee table book; the cover and the photography are conversation starters. It is a documentation of interviews. It is an academic book for it highlights the food philosophy of both Questlove and these chefs. Ultimately, it is a food lover's book, with photographs to salivate over, chefs whose work to aspire to, and food ideas to contemplate.

Read my complete review at http://www.memoriesfrombooks.com/2016/07/something-to-food-about.html.

Review for the Blogging for Books program.

I can only give myself credit for 1/2 of Mo Meta Blues. The first half of the book was great, but by the middle of the book, when The Roots finally made it, the hip hop and rap bands discussed are not anything that I'm interested in (not Questlove's fault), just my own preference in music. However, the first part of the book where Questlove is enthralled with the music I grew up on was a delight to read, so I'm giving the four stars on that part of the book. If you're a hip hop/rap fan, you will surely enjoy the whole book.

Great read! This book will inspire a young reader to explore their passions, be it music or otherwise. Fun, fast and completely cool.