uproxx interviews

How Saba Found The True Meaning Of Wealth With His New Album, ‘Few Good Things’

by
Saba Few Good Things Interview
C.T. Robert

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Things are looking up for Saba. On the Chicago rapper’s last album, Care For Me, he came to grips with the trauma of losing his cousin and Pivot Gang bandmate John Walt to street violence, and in the last two years, he’s seen another member of the crew, Squeak, fall victim as well. So, you’d be forgiven for being surprised that his first new effort in three years, Few Good Things, takes a completely opposite tack compared to its predecessor.

This was intentional, as I learned during a Zoom call with Saba to discuss the new project and all he’s done since Care For Me became a fan favorite. That album, he says, is “so personal that it’s like my fans and people who are fans of that album, they now have an emotional connection to those songs and those lyrics in that time period. So going into this album, there’s something that you have to accept as an artist and that’s that once people develop an emotional connection and it’s not just an objective connection to something, that’ll be your best album regardless of what you do.”

This is why he approached Few Good Things as an “anti-Care For Me.” Creative decisions that would work for one wouldn’t work for another, so Saba had to reverse the formula that made Care For Me such a success – a risky move which he acknowledged, accepting that fans’ reception of the new work could go the other way as well. “Every decision we made on [Care For Me], how do we make the opposite decision on this one while still being original and organic and authentic to who I am? Because Care For Me is such a part of me, but also Few Good Things is a fuller scope of who I am.”

As Saba points out, there were as many years between those two albums as there were between his initial breakout on Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap mixtape and Care For Me. The same level of growth and evolution is evident, as well, although he sticks close to his roots as one of the products of Chicago’s Young Chicago Authors open mics. Those same open mics produced city standouts like Chance, Mick Jenkins, Noname, and the rest of Saba’s Pivot Gang crew Joseph Chilliams, Frsh Waters, MFnMelo, and John Walt. That sound – effortlessly complex, full of heady wordplay and surprising, off-kilter cadences – remains an anchor point for the 13 songs on Few Good Things, while Saba makes an effort to expand the sound beyond the muddled, rainy palette of his prior work.

For instance, on “Fearmonger,” produced by Pivot mainstays Daoud and Daedae, a bright bassline underpins a stripped-down instrumental as Saba meditates on the nature of the near-constant anxiety that comes with growing up at the lower end of the income spectrum – and seeing that course slowly reverse through his own precarious efforts. Not only does the song represent a hard left turn from the introspective material he’s best known for, but he also shared it as the first single from the album as an intentional bid to reset fans’ expectations ahead of time.

“We dropped ‘Fearmonger’ first because it’s the most sonically opposite of the entire Care For Me album,” he explains. “I wanted to scare people, I wanted them to not be sure how they felt about it and that to me is what pushes sonic boundaries, especially in hip-hop.” He offers an even wider perspective, pointing out that, “it’s a lot of monotony, it’s a lot of the same, so I think when I do a record like ‘Fearmonger,’ I want to put that out and push that because there’s an individualistic approach to the conception of that record. So, some fans might hear that and not understand how to listen to it but based on fan-hood and them wanting to like it — because fans want to like the music — some of them will listen until they do like it. And I think that’s how music’s meant to be listened to.”

Putting out a song called “Fearmonger” in the hopes of scaring people out of complacency – and doing so so completely fearlessly – is a bold move, but the rollout for this project is full of them. In addition to the album, Saba has shot a short film, also titled Few Good Things, hoping to capture the spirit of the music. He also betrays next to no apprehension about switching disciplines, instead displaying the same bold confidence with which he talks about juking fans’ expectations.

“I think the cool part of being able to play music, but music specifically that is lyric-based, is that we’re able to use our language to set scenes,” he explains. “We can make our language really visual, and I think that’s one of the elements that make telling personal stories, firsthand, telling things that are valuable to me, I think that’s one of the things that makes it unique. It makes people connect to it, but I think it’s always been, with our writing style, it’s always been really visual.” That skill, he says, is critical to making the leap into a visual medium. “When we started really locking in and working on this album, the director of this film, C.T. Robert, was really close,” he says.

“Every song that got done, he got immediately. We talked. We had full conversations, pretty much every time anything new got added to the mix, where we broke down family stuff. We broke down the lyrics. We broke down everything so that it was really open, in terms of the writing of the film, while also the writing of the album was happening simultaneously.” However, he’s still not sure how he feels about the movie or the album, yet, because they’re not out there in the world where viewers and listeners can consume them – his one concession to the artistic anxiety he’s been able to somehow escape throughout the process.

“I think I’ll experience that the day of the screening, the day it’s public, the day everybody is able to see it,” he says, “because that’s the day that it’s going to feel like, ‘Alright. This is real. This is tangible. We’ve released this.’ I’m so used to having things months and months and months in advance that it almost is imaginary until it’s released. This album, even Few Good Things, it’s been music that has been done for months and months and months. So, to finally be releasing it next week now, it’s just a crazy, crazy, crazy feeling.”

As far as what he wants those fans and consumers to take away from the concept of Few Good Things, he offers a few examples of the things that have become important to him and sustained him through the tough times that aren’t even all that far in the rearview. “One thing that I got from these last couple of years is time,” he observes. “I got a lot of my time back, and in having that time, you’re able to realize how valuable just that is. Just being able to spend your time how you want and not having to make choices based on necessity and survival and all of this other shit, but just how would you spend your day if you could spend your day how you wanted to spend it and that’s what true wealth equates to.”

Few Good Things is out 2/4 via Pivot Gang, LLC. You can pre-save here.

Muni Long Has No Plans To Lose Her Way In The Spotlight

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Muni Long 2022 Press Photo
Tony Bowen Photography

In 2020, the artist formerly known as Priscilla Renea decided it was time for a change. She’d been successful in the industry as a songwriter, penning records for the likes of Rihanna (“California King Bed”), Ariana Grande (“Imagine“), Pitbull and Kesha (“Timber“), Fifth Harmony (“Worth It”), and more. While these are all undoubtedly successful records, a fresh start was what she truly desired. So in 2020, Renea changed her stage name to what we all know her by today: Muni Long. Between then and now, Long used her veteran experience, combined with the appearance of being a new artist, to do things her way.

And then she struck gold. At the end of 2021, Long released Public Displays Of Affection, her third project under her new stage name. In a matter of a month, “Hrs And Hrs” from the project grew to not only be a fan favorite from the project but a viral record on TikTok as well. The song is a sultry and immensely passionate record that manifests a love that lasts a lifetime. However, the track’s success didn’t stop there. Just a month in 2022, “Hrs And Hrs” has climbed upward on the Billboard Hot 100 chart where it currently sits at No. 25. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, we can expect the song to grow even more and reach new heights.

We caught up with Muni Long to talk about the record, her growth as an artist and songwriter, and what she hopes the future for herself and the industry looks like.

With the success you’re experiencing as Muni Long, it’s also brought attention to your past work as Priscilla Renea, thus elevating your past and current chapters. How has this experience been watching it all unfold?

I’m just happy to always be able to be free and express myself in whatever way I want to, I think that’s the power of the internet. Also, when you just choose fearlessly to exist the way you want to exist, and you’re able to be your most authentic self, then people will love you for it and accept you. I think part of that, what people don’t really maybe cling on is that I’m everything that doing it for the pure joy of this is just what I want to be doing. My intention is not to go viral or have everybody love what I’m doing, I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less about that part. I think that’s part of the magic, right? It was like a balance between focusing on what you want and attracting it and then creating that distance so it’s like you’re not desperate for it when it comes to you. I’m just excited that I finally figured out that formula because I know that that means I can do this over and over again.

How did you learn to deal with the frustrations of being boxed in as a songwriter despite wanting to break out as your own established artists?

I’ve been like, really, really high and then really, really low. I’ve always believed in the idea that you got to keep going and because I have had like some crazy health scares and moments where I was like, “Oh, sh*t, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sing again,” you sort of lose that concern for what everybody else thinks. I’m already very down to earth, but I think having some really humbling moments where you realize, “dang you really can lose it all,” it just makes you just live carefree. I’m just glad to be here, glad to be alive, glad to be able to breathe, you know, just simple things like that. Everything else is a bonus., an extra. I think me getting to that place mentally, spiritually, [and] emotionally has contributed to the success of the song, the success of my Muni Long project. I don’t know, I’m just really happy to be alive.

Your success on TikTok with “Hrs And Hrs” is similar to that which you achieved on YouTube to start your career. What inspirations or anything at all did you keep in mind when it was time to use TikTok to your advantage?

I don’t think anything was specific to the song. My strategy was just to get back to being my authentic self: goofy, not caring about what people think about me, blocking all the negativity — literally like I’ll block and delete it. Really just liking all the comments and having a rapport with enough of my following to actually respond to people or have a relationship with them. I wouldn’t say that we’re friends — I mean a couple of people, like literally maybe one or two, I’ve actually become close with outside of the internet, like, we talked on the phone and hang out. But I actually have a rapport with my supporters, like my true supporters. I could tell, I just know who really are the ones who really f*ck with me, and the ones who are just here because of the song, it’s love to all kinds of traffic. I think the strategy is to actually care about the people you’re asking to support and listen to your music. I actually really do care about them and I want them to feel inspired and uplifted by what I’m giving them.

Looking at how things went for you after your YouTube success, what have you learned from then that you plan to do differently with your resurgence?

Just keep the negativity to a minimum. I don’t want to engage in any drama. I just want to have fun, that’s it. Have fun, keep making great music, perform, connect with people, [and] experience the best things in life.

With “Hrs And Hrs,” what was the one moment where you realized this song was going to be bigger than you ever imagined?

Okay, so I was home, like Christmas — no, it was New Year’s Eve. I went home to visit my parents, me and my husband were supposed to be on vacation, but that didn’t work out. We ended up going to my mom’s house in Florida and I was on the way back home from Chick Fil A with my husband and we were just in the car and I heard the song playing and I kind of panicked like hold up, where’s that coming from? I don’t know why I panicked, but I just was nervous for a second, like, what the hell? My phone is not on, the radio is not on, what is that? I realized that the car next to us was blasting the song, and I was like, “Oh sh*t, she’s playing the song.” Then she merged over in front of us and we could see her finger waving like she was singing the song. I was like, “Oh that’s crazy!.” At first, it felt like a video game. It just didn’t feel real

How would you describe your growth as Muni Long over the past two years?

I think there’s being confident in who I am, really enforcing the boundary of love and light, positivity, [and] manifesting what you want on songs like “Build A Bae.” There’s “Hrs And Hrs” which people have said that they’ve been using as an affirmation song to manifest love. I think people are always looking for some type of drama, they’re always trying to start something. One of my things as an artist is to just really enforce that I don’t want to be a part of that. Let’s have fun, let’s elevate, let’s grow as people and individuals, let’s encourage each other, and let’s support each other’s artistry. I’m starting to see the fruits of that in my life behind the scenes. As I continue to exist in the spotlight, people will see more of that where I’m collaborating with a lot of these other dope female artists. Collaborations are coming with some of the guys too, it’s just like that message is gonna continue to permeate. Beefing is really stupid to me, I’m just happy to be alive. I don’t wanna beef with nobody, but that’s the biggest thing to me for Muni Long. Even the name Muni Long is an affirmation. My whole life is centered around attracting the best possible out of this universe and you can’t do that when you have any type of blockages or animosity. Of course, you need darkness in order for life to exist and vice versa, but I just choose to be the light and that’s really the biggest thing.

How have things changed for you in the past couple of months, even on the most minimal scale possible? How are you handling it?

It’s pretty crazy what the internet can do for you. Honestly, the best way to explain it is I don’t know if you’ve ever walked into church late? Or walk into class late and everybody turned around and look at you? It really feels like I walk into a stadium of people and everybody turned around and looked at me at the same time. It’s like, “Damn! Okay.” It’s not a bad thing, I’m ready for it, it’s like, I can take it but all of y’all just turned around at the same time? My Instagram went crazy. Or the last two weeks. Like last week, I was getting like 60,000-70,000 followers a day. My Instagram went from 80k to 361k [followers]. That’s nuts! It happened super fast. The kind of attention that I’m getting now is different. The other day I went to lunch with my friends, and four people walked in the restaurant waving at me, you know, “Oh can I take a picture?” I’m like, yo that’s crazy. Now, I’m at the point, like, I went out on Sunday, and somebody was filming me while I was eating my food. They posted on Instagram and I was like, okay that’s weird. Stuff like that is weird, but you know, what you gonna do?

It’s a new year and you’ve already experienced so much success. What are some additional goals that you have for yourself both musically and personally?

I just want to keep exploring the depths of my talent. I know that this is the song that blew up and it’s super R&B, but I rap, you know, I have all these things that I can do that I want to do. I just want to have fun, so just being able to have success on multiple levels. Doing some Latin music, you know, just exploring. Then getting into the fashion world and the beauty world, maybe some film and television. I just want to explore my creativity.

You’ve got the attention of the industry as you’re one the most talked-about artists. What’s one or two things that you’d ask from the industry?

I just wish that people in general were nicer. I went through hell in the beginning, like the first 5-7 years of my career, people can just be really mean. You never know what people are going through. Like how people were making fun of Chadwick Boseman for being so skinny, and then they found out he was sick. Why do we feel so comfortable picking on people? I never understood that. That would be one thing, and I know that’s not really the industry, but I think artists kind of set the standard, right? If we come out and speak up against certain things, or if there were more programs or opportunities for us to encourage kindness? I know it sounds like such a small thing, but I don’t know, I just hate it. A lot of these fans — not to like name anyone specific but I think we know who we’re talking about here, like different groups that support artists, they’re really mean. They’re mean to other artists, they’re mean to other fans, it’s like that energy is not cool.

Public Displays Of Affection is out now via Supergiant Records. You can stream it here.

Black Thought Is Ready To Go Deep On His Life, The Roots, And Late Night

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Getty/Ralph Ordaz

There’s a kind of intimacy that comes from hearing someone recount the odyssey of their life. Subtle sways in tone that give away the emotion behind a certain beat in the story. 7 Years (which you can hear on Audible), by Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, delivers on that promise as we learn about the hip-hop icon’s childhood, the emergence of The Roots, and his many influences — both in music and life. But it’s not an obvious choice for anyone to be this open and introspective.

In this expansive interview, we spoke with Trotter about opening up, his guiding philosophy about control and flexibility, anxiety about joining forces with Jimmy Fallon, his influences, and not forcing music history onto a younger audience.

What’s the motivation behind going deep and telling your story like this? Is it a want to be more deeply understood or is it more about doing a personal excavation?

I think it was initially about being more deeply understood, but as you embark on that sort of project, different layers sort of reveal themselves during the process. So there’s definitely a certain degree of self-discovery that takes place, which is the beautiful part. For someone like me who hasn’t been as accessible as I am in this moment in time… I’ve shared personal stuff about my past and my family in Philadelphia and The Roots early on in our career and stuff like that, but I’ve never gotten too deep into any of it. So there’s something to be said about just sort of getting things off your chest and off your shoulders and just being able to lift some of those weights and to be more transparent. I was able to be vulnerable, on the 7 Years project, in ways that I’ve yet to in my music.

Why do you think you haven’t been as open in the past?

I’m a guarded person by nature, and I’m sure some of it has something to do with the time and place from which I come, but, you know, it’s a habit. I feel like it served me, it served me fine throughout my career to not necessarily be in the forefront, to not necessarily share that much information about my personal life. That’s the way that I’ve moved, so it was a decision that I made earlier on. [But] I feel like, at this point in my career, it’s sort of the final frontier. If you asked someone who’s a long-time fan and who has supported us over the years, what they’d like or what would be ideal for them in a project… which I’ve done, and people tell me, “I would just like to know more about you. About the person.” So, it’s a delicate balance because I am still very private, but yeah, I feel like this is sort of the ideal time to open up in that way.

I subscribe to a lot of what you were saying about the need to be flexible and kind of realizing our smallness against the forces of nature, the wind, as you use as a metaphor or the waves. When did you kind of land on that as sort of a bedrock principle with the need for reinvention every seven years and that need to be flexible?

I don’t even know that I had it when I was coming up, as much as it was something that dawned on me as an adult. I would say, in recent years, it’s something that I came to understand. Before then, it’s something that I always felt but never really could put my finger on why I felt that way. I wasn’t able to make sense of it until more recently, I would say.

We all have this healthy ego and we see ourselves as this indestructible force, but to have that ability to step aside and realize that we’re not and we need to kind of just try to hang on to as much as we can while surviving is really fascinating to me.

I agree. You know, when you think of things like the overview effect, and how that affects astronauts who leave Earth’s atmosphere and go out into space, it can be overwhelming for some. It depends on sort of how you’re prepared for it mentally. It could be overwhelming or it could be… It’s definitely life-changing, from what I understand, but it could be just this huge, more of a revelation when you sort of come to understand… not only the role that we play here on the planet but just how small of a cog the planet Earth is in the machine that is the universe. I feel like there are parallels in just the level of acceptance that you need to exercise in order to sort of come through, come out on the other side of it, without losing your mind. I think it’s comparable to that.

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It seems clear that you guys were looking at the Fallon job as a clear pivot, but when you went into that situation, did you envision that it would be that much of a commitment and this long-term of a thing?

No. I don’t think we had a complete understanding of how much of a commitment we were getting into, or how long of a run it would be. I feel like so much has happened over the past 12 years. Then I also feel like 12 years has sort of gone by in the blink of an eye. I don’t think we had any clue. We also had no idea how we were going to sort of navigate all our other endeavors and sort of balance that stuff out. Would that sort of be the end of one version of The Roots and the beginning of another? Obviously, yes, on some levels. Would we sort of lose ourselves in the process? That sort of remains unknown. You have to sort of watch it unfold in real-time.

It has been a blessing working on The Tonight Show and just working in the capacity of a comedian and just being in front of an audience every day and being on TV every day has only made us better. I think it’s made us sharper, it’s made us a tighter unit as a collective, just a higher level of artistry and brotherhood and everything that sort of goes with it. I feel like it’s definitely the best decision, but we couldn’t have known at that point in time.

Being more home-based during that time, as opposed to traveling as much — how do you think that’s influenced you? From the albums that you’ve recorded during this time to even this project, because I would guess that you could say that maybe you wouldn’t be as willing to be accessible if you hadn’t had that exposure constantly with Fallon. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. I think that might be fair to say. There’s a certain level of reinvention, reintroduction, like reminder introduction that takes place when you have a long career working in one capacity and then you pivot in the way that we did. I’m constantly trying to sort of … I mean, not that I’m frantic about it, or something that happens on as much on a conscious level as it does on a subconscious level. To a certain extent, I am just trying to balance the identity that people sort of know me as. You know what I mean?

Yes.

There are folks who weren’t familiar with The Roots before we came to NBC, who only know me as Tariq from The Tonight Show. They think I’m funny and they know I’m quick-witted and I can improvise songs on the spot. They don’t really know or understand the journey, or realize that from which The Roots sort of come. Then there are people who were diehard Roots fans from day one, who don’t necessarily know this person. They’ve gotten to know the person that I am or what my identity has become on The Tonight Show. Just like trying to balance that out is something that happens constantly. It’s a continuous thing. So, you just go from one end of the spectrum, and just as soon as you’ve sort of balanced out everything on that end, you need to return to the opposite end to restore balance down there.

Were you worried about that kind of situation when you jumped into this job, the idea of people only knowing you from The Tonight Show, not knowing how deep The Roots music goes? Also, are you surprised at how comfortable you’ve become with the knowledge that “Okay, some people know me for this, some people know me for that”? Where was your headspace then versus now?

I definitely feel it was a concern in the beginning. We had worked very hard, and we had made very many sacrifices, even at that point in our career, which ’07 was when we first met Jimmy. ’07 or early in ’08, something like that. Yeah, we had already made so many sacrifices just to maintain a certain level of integrity and to maintain a certain bar that we set with the brand. Yeah, it was definitely a concern. I was concerned that we were starting from ground zero again in very many regards. So there was that. Over the years, I have sort of been … I’ve surprised myself, just with my evolution… as a storyteller and as a musician and as an actor and as a comedian and TV personality, costar. Being able to sort of step up to the plate in all the different regards. I surprise myself. Sometimes I got to jump back and kiss myself. [Laughs] No, I’m just playing.

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This project also has the benefit of being able to take some of those fans that only know you from The Tonight Show and introduce them to the deeper complexity of your work and The Roots.

Absolutely. I think this project is able to function as the perfect sort of bridge on either side. For people who may have thought, or may have had a certain impression of what it’s like to be on a TV show, or ways in which my life may or may not have changed, I think I sort of paint an accurate picture. You know? And it serves as a bridge.

The situation with Questlove and with DaBaby where DaBaby said he didn’t know who Questlove was when responding to the criticism Questlove laid out there: hearing something like that, how does that make you feel?

I mean, I’m fine with it. You know? I don’t know. I can’t say that he’s not telling the truth. You know what I’m saying? Of course you know who Questlove is. Everyone doesn’t. You know what I mean? Some people work with musicians, producers… There are people who work in folks’ homes who the people whose homes they’re working in don’t know their names. So I can’t just assume because he’s been on The Tonight Show and because Questlove played drums for him that he’s familiar with him. I don’t know if someone knows Questlove or not. It doesn’t really matter to me. I feel like there are bigger fish to fry, especially in the world and in this moment. I mean, it is what it is.

This came to my mind when I was listening to 7 Years. The detail you bring to the conversation about all the artists that influenced you and the really broad coalition of sounds that you exposed yourself to… To me, when someone says that kind of comment, they’re kind of telling on themselves if they say they don’t know who somebody is. Is that a fair assessment?

I think it’s a pretty fair assessment. I mean, you know, the younger generation, just younger people, younger artists, for them, and I might be completely off on this, I can only speak to the way it seems or the way it feels. It doesn’t feel, to me, like paying homage to the foundation and to where the music sort of came from, to the old school, is as important to younger artists or the artists of today, as it has been over the years or as it’s been to me personally or to as important as it is and always has been to people from my graduating class. You know what I mean?

Yes.

I have children in their 20s. And I’m an artist, and I’m their father, and I don’t know that they’re… They’re not up on the legacy, the history, what made me want to do want it is that I do. This person influenced this person who influenced me. I mean, I don’t impress it upon my kids, but I don’t impress it upon them because they’re disinterested. They could care less. I don’t hold that against them. It’s just one of those things. The world has changed. People have changed, and what their concerns are have evolved to something completely different. Sometimes, I try to understand it, but more often than not, I just give up and I just accept that I don’t understand it and won’t. [Laughs]

At the end of the day, all you can do is what you’re doing, which is talking about your influences, putting those names out there, and drawing a map for people to find if they want to go down that path. Right?

Exactly. But it’s a delicate balance. I don’t want it to be preachy. I want it to feel like if you want to go down that path. I don’t want to have you reluctantly taken down that path against your will all the time.

You can download Tariq Trotter’s ‘7 Years’ on Audible by going here.

Black Thought Is Ready To Go Deep On His Life, The Roots, And Late Night

by
Getty/Ralph Ordaz

There’s a kind of intimacy that comes from hearing someone recount the odyssey of their life. Subtle sways in tone that give away the emotion behind a certain beat in the story. 7 Years (which you can hear on Audible), by Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, delivers on that promise as we learn about the hip-hop icon’s childhood, the emergence of The Roots, and his many influences — both in music and life. But it’s not an obvious choice for anyone to be this open and introspective.

In this expansive interview, we spoke with Trotter about opening up, his guiding philosophy about control and flexibility, anxiety about joining forces with Jimmy Fallon, his influences, and not forcing music history onto a younger audience.

What’s the motivation behind going deep and telling your story like this? Is it a want to be more deeply understood or is it more about doing a personal excavation?

I think it was initially about being more deeply understood, but as you embark on that sort of project, different layers sort of reveal themselves during the process. So there’s definitely a certain degree of self-discovery that takes place, which is the beautiful part. For someone like me who hasn’t been as accessible as I am in this moment in time… I’ve shared personal stuff about my past and my family in Philadelphia and The Roots early on in our career and stuff like that, but I’ve never gotten too deep into any of it. So there’s something to be said about just sort of getting things off your chest and off your shoulders and just being able to lift some of those weights and to be more transparent. I was able to be vulnerable, on the 7 Years project, in ways that I’ve yet to in my music.

Why do you think you haven’t been as open in the past?

I’m a guarded person by nature, and I’m sure some of it has something to do with the time and place from which I come, but, you know, it’s a habit. I feel like it served me, it served me fine throughout my career to not necessarily be in the forefront, to not necessarily share that much information about my personal life. That’s the way that I’ve moved, so it was a decision that I made earlier on. [But] I feel like, at this point in my career, it’s sort of the final frontier. If you asked someone who’s a long-time fan and who has supported us over the years, what they’d like or what would be ideal for them in a project… which I’ve done, and people tell me, “I would just like to know more about you. About the person.” So, it’s a delicate balance because I am still very private, but yeah, I feel like this is sort of the ideal time to open up in that way.

I subscribe to a lot of what you were saying about the need to be flexible and kind of realizing our smallness against the forces of nature, the wind, as you use as a metaphor or the waves. When did you kind of land on that as sort of a bedrock principle with the need for reinvention every seven years and that need to be flexible?

I don’t even know that I had it when I was coming up, as much as it was something that dawned on me as an adult. I would say, in recent years, it’s something that I came to understand. Before then, it’s something that I always felt but never really could put my finger on why I felt that way. I wasn’t able to make sense of it until more recently, I would say.

We all have this healthy ego and we see ourselves as this indestructible force, but to have that ability to step aside and realize that we’re not and we need to kind of just try to hang on to as much as we can while surviving is really fascinating to me.

I agree. You know, when you think of things like the overview effect, and how that affects astronauts who leave Earth’s atmosphere and go out into space, it can be overwhelming for some. It depends on sort of how you’re prepared for it mentally. It could be overwhelming or it could be… It’s definitely life-changing, from what I understand, but it could be just this huge, more of a revelation when you sort of come to understand… not only the role that we play here on the planet but just how small of a cog the planet Earth is in the machine that is the universe. I feel like there are parallels in just the level of acceptance that you need to exercise in order to sort of come through, come out on the other side of it, without losing your mind. I think it’s comparable to that.

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It seems clear that you guys were looking at the Fallon job as a clear pivot, but when you went into that situation, did you envision that it would be that much of a commitment and this long-term of a thing?

No. I don’t think we had a complete understanding of how much of a commitment we were getting into, or how long of a run it would be. I feel like so much has happened over the past 12 years. Then I also feel like 12 years has sort of gone by in the blink of an eye. I don’t think we had any clue. We also had no idea how we were going to sort of navigate all our other endeavors and sort of balance that stuff out. Would that sort of be the end of one version of The Roots and the beginning of another? Obviously, yes, on some levels. Would we sort of lose ourselves in the process? That sort of remains unknown. You have to sort of watch it unfold in real-time.

It has been a blessing working on The Tonight Show and just working in the capacity of a comedian and just being in front of an audience every day and being on TV every day has only made us better. I think it’s made us sharper, it’s made us a tighter unit as a collective, just a higher level of artistry and brotherhood and everything that sort of goes with it. I feel like it’s definitely the best decision, but we couldn’t have known at that point in time.

Being more home-based during that time, as opposed to traveling as much — how do you think that’s influenced you? From the albums that you’ve recorded during this time to even this project, because I would guess that you could say that maybe you wouldn’t be as willing to be accessible if you hadn’t had that exposure constantly with Fallon. Is that fair to say?

Yeah. I think that might be fair to say. There’s a certain level of reinvention, reintroduction, like reminder introduction that takes place when you have a long career working in one capacity and then you pivot in the way that we did. I’m constantly trying to sort of … I mean, not that I’m frantic about it, or something that happens on as much on a conscious level as it does on a subconscious level. To a certain extent, I am just trying to balance the identity that people sort of know me as. You know what I mean?

Yes.

There are folks who weren’t familiar with The Roots before we came to NBC, who only know me as Tariq from The Tonight Show. They think I’m funny and they know I’m quick-witted and I can improvise songs on the spot. They don’t really know or understand the journey, or realize that from which The Roots sort of come. Then there are people who were diehard Roots fans from day one, who don’t necessarily know this person. They’ve gotten to know the person that I am or what my identity has become on The Tonight Show. Just like trying to balance that out is something that happens constantly. It’s a continuous thing. So, you just go from one end of the spectrum, and just as soon as you’ve sort of balanced out everything on that end, you need to return to the opposite end to restore balance down there.

Were you worried about that kind of situation when you jumped into this job, the idea of people only knowing you from The Tonight Show, not knowing how deep The Roots music goes? Also, are you surprised at how comfortable you’ve become with the knowledge that “Okay, some people know me for this, some people know me for that”? Where was your headspace then versus now?

I definitely feel it was a concern in the beginning. We had worked very hard, and we had made very many sacrifices, even at that point in our career, which ’07 was when we first met Jimmy. ’07 or early in ’08, something like that. Yeah, we had already made so many sacrifices just to maintain a certain level of integrity and to maintain a certain bar that we set with the brand. Yeah, it was definitely a concern. I was concerned that we were starting from ground zero again in very many regards. So there was that. Over the years, I have sort of been … I’ve surprised myself, just with my evolution… as a storyteller and as a musician and as an actor and as a comedian and TV personality, costar. Being able to sort of step up to the plate in all the different regards. I surprise myself. Sometimes I got to jump back and kiss myself. [Laughs] No, I’m just playing.

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This project also has the benefit of being able to take some of those fans that only know you from The Tonight Show and introduce them to the deeper complexity of your work and The Roots.

Absolutely. I think this project is able to function as the perfect sort of bridge on either side. For people who may have thought, or may have had a certain impression of what it’s like to be on a TV show, or ways in which my life may or may not have changed, I think I sort of paint an accurate picture. You know? And it serves as a bridge.

The situation with Questlove and with DaBaby where DaBaby said he didn’t know who Questlove was when responding to the criticism Questlove laid out there: hearing something like that, how does that make you feel?

I mean, I’m fine with it. You know? I don’t know. I can’t say that he’s not telling the truth. You know what I’m saying? Of course you know who Questlove is. Everyone doesn’t. You know what I mean? Some people work with musicians, producers… There are people who work in folks’ homes who the people whose homes they’re working in don’t know their names. So I can’t just assume because he’s been on The Tonight Show and because Questlove played drums for him that he’s familiar with him. I don’t know if someone knows Questlove or not. It doesn’t really matter to me. I feel like there are bigger fish to fry, especially in the world and in this moment. I mean, it is what it is.

This came to my mind when I was listening to 7 Years. The detail you bring to the conversation about all the artists that influenced you and the really broad coalition of sounds that you exposed yourself to… To me, when someone says that kind of comment, they’re kind of telling on themselves if they say they don’t know who somebody is. Is that a fair assessment?

I think it’s a pretty fair assessment. I mean, you know, the younger generation, just younger people, younger artists, for them, and I might be completely off on this, I can only speak to the way it seems or the way it feels. It doesn’t feel, to me, like paying homage to the foundation and to where the music sort of came from, to the old school, is as important to younger artists or the artists of today, as it has been over the years or as it’s been to me personally or to as important as it is and always has been to people from my graduating class. You know what I mean?

Yes.

I have children in their 20s. And I’m an artist, and I’m their father, and I don’t know that they’re… They’re not up on the legacy, the history, what made me want to do want it is that I do. This person influenced this person who influenced me. I mean, I don’t impress it upon my kids, but I don’t impress it upon them because they’re disinterested. They could care less. I don’t hold that against them. It’s just one of those things. The world has changed. People have changed, and what their concerns are have evolved to something completely different. Sometimes, I try to understand it, but more often than not, I just give up and I just accept that I don’t understand it and won’t. [Laughs]

At the end of the day, all you can do is what you’re doing, which is talking about your influences, putting those names out there, and drawing a map for people to find if they want to go down that path. Right?

Exactly. But it’s a delicate balance. I don’t want it to be preachy. I want it to feel like if you want to go down that path. I don’t want to have you reluctantly taken down that path against your will all the time.

You can download Tariq Trotter’s ‘7 Years’ on Audible by going here.

Ice-T Tells Us About His Twitter Pet Peeve, The ‘Law & Order’ Crossover Event, Body Count, And… Laundry?

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Ice-T remains an institution throughout the various realms of pop culture, going strong for over 30 years now. From his earliest 1980s solo rapper days to his heavy-metal stylings with Body Count (the group recently won a Grammy), his influence cannot be underestimated. Nor has his career remained predictable, although once Ice-T makes a move, he does not waver, which is precisely why Law and Order: SVU fans have dug him as Fin Tutuola since the year 2000. He’s done reality TV and tells it to everyone straight on Twitter, and the man has never been anything but consistently entertaining.

Such a reliable nature might work to Ice-T’s advantage with his new ad campaign for Tide alongside Stone Cold Steve Austin. You’d probably never expect to see him associated with a laundry detergent brand, but he’s on board to educate people (through the #TurnToCold campaign) about the environmental (and money-saving) benefits of washing clothes in cold water. Not that Ice-T actually does the laundry at home, which is something that he had no problem admitting while he was cool enough to chat with us. We touched upon plenty of topics during our discussion, including when he’ll tour again, how he feels about working with Chris Meloni on the Law and Order: SVU crossover with Organized Crime, his approach to Twitter, and other assorted odds and ends.

Is this really the O.G. Original Gangster on the line here?

Hey! How you doin,’ Kim?

I should tell you that Law and Order: SVU was once a go-to syndicated show while I did cardio at the gym. Now we don’t go to the gym, and it’s a little bit sad!

Can I tell you a funny story?

Please do.

I was in Miami one time, and this lady walked up to me, and she goes, “I was on the treadmill, and I said I would go off when Law and Order went off, and it was a marathon, so I ran 26 miles.” I was like, she did a TV marathon and a marathon at the same time, okay yeah, be careful with that.

It’s strangely motivational to watch you guys take down the indisputably bad guys, and you’ve been on the show for over 20 years at this point.

Yeah, 22 years. I technically came in during the first episodes of the second season, but they shot it during the first season, so I try to claim the first season, but there’ll be arguments. [Laughs] But I’ve been on it a long time.

You’re a pretty fit guy. With gyms being closed and all that and touring not happening, are you still getting your workouts?

I stay in shape. I have a little mini-gym in my house, so I do my dips and my calisthenics, so I’ve always pretty much been in shape. You can get out of shape very easily as you get older, so I gotta stay on top of it. Since I’m on television all the time, I don’t wanna look at myself and say, “Look at yo’ fat ass!” I’m forced to be vain in that respect, but when you marry a swimsuit model, it’s not smart to get fat, so I’ve got a lot of motivation around to stay slim and trim, but I’m doing okay.

You’re SVU-ing it on an April 1 crossover episode, which is the premiere of Chris Meloni’s Organized Crime spinoff. What’s it like to have him back in the saddle?

Well, it’s fun for me. The thing of it is, the difference between me and the fans is that I’ve been in touch with Chris over the last ten years while he’s done his movies and while he had his show, Happy. Me and Chris kinda became friends because we worked together twelve years, so when we got back and we did our scenes together, it’s just like old times. We’re glad to have him back, but Chris wanted to do other things. A lot of actors, well, you don’t become an actor to just play one role for twenty years. It’s about being able to be different characters, and that’s what actors love to do. So, now he’s back, he’s happy, and he’s got his own show, so when you see this reunion, it’s gonna blow everybody away because it’s written well, and it’s good.

Speaking of blown minds… dare I ask how you got involved with your new Tide commercial?

I got cold-called. When people want you to do commercials, the first thing you do is ask, “Does the shoe fit?” “How am I gonna be connected to Tide?” Although I use Tide already, so they told me that cold washing helps the environment, it saves money, and also, it doesn’t ruin your clothes, which is smarter. And Tide does not require hot water to activate. It cleans just as well in cold water, so I thought that was cool. I was like, “Okay, okay, got that!” And then I figured out, “Oh, it’s because my name is Ice.” And they said, “The campaign will be you and Stone Cold Steve Austin,” so I was like, “I’m in.” I’m a fan of Stone Cold Steve Austin, so we went and did the campaign, and it’s a really cool campaign. We’re cold-calling people and telling them about the benefits of using Tide in cold water. We cold-called Mr. T, and it’s kind-of a cool commercial.

And does Ice-T do the laundry at home?

No, I don’t do it. Coco does the laundry. We’ve got a very old-school family situation, so she loves doing laundry, and she’s like, “I’ve got this.” Because she knows that if I do the laundry, I’m gonna half-ass do it.

You know what people say: you can’t be good at everything.

But I told her, and she got the memo that we no longer have to use this hot water, from what I understand, to clean it. And I don’t have to shrink my clothes up and have the colors running and all that stuff, so it’s great.

Can we talk about your wonderful Twitter account? It is consistently entertaining.

Let’s talk!

You’re out there lobbying for an “edit” button while saying that you’ve heard all of the comments for and against one, but dammit, you want one.

I think it’s stupid that they don’t have one! I mean, Instagram has one. People are so concerned: “Oh, you could say something, and then you could take it back!” You can screenshot, and all the reasons they don’t want an edit button are negative. It’s just based around catching someone saying something and then trying to deny it. It’s based in negativity, it’s not based to help people. There’s a million different ways they could do an edit button. They can make it so that if you edit it, it says it’s been edited — it could have a little symbol. What they don’t understand is that I’ll put up a tweet, and it might get 2000 likes, and then I’ll realize that something’s spelled wrong, and then you don’t wanna take that one down. Because I’ve had times when I’ve had a bunch of people like something, and I took it down, and they got offended. But you know, it’s Twitter, and maybe Twitter’s just not wanting to be like IG, but you know, whatever. Then don’t comment on my spelling! All the spelling Nazis, stop.

Twitter is for bursts of 240 characters. Typos happen that way.

And also, Twitter’s something you’re doing on your phone! Your thumbs are moving, and they won’t have an edit button, but they’ve got autocorrect. So why do you have autocorrect if I’m talking slang? So whatever, it’s nothing… I just had a moment when I felt like saying it because I just tweeted something where I didn’t put an -ing on a word, and I felt like, “Man, why can’t I just edit this stuff?” Whatever, who cares.

You once tweeted about blowing through a toll booth on accident and briefly getting arrested.

Yeahhhh. [Laughs]

There was quite a reaction to that saga on Twitter and on the news.

It was stupid. You’ve got real crimes and all that going on, and as far as arresting me? Yeah, I think they overreacted. They could’ve given me a ticket. A lot of times when a cop arrests a celebrity, it gives them the chance to be famous. They never arrested anyone, but they arrested JLo. So now, they get to say, “Ahhhh, I put JLo in handcuffs.” It’s something that they do for themselves. You know, as many crimes as I’ve committed in my life, and you’re gonna bust me for running a toll? It’s funny to me. If there’s nobody in the trunk, I’m not sweating, so I’m not really worried about it. The thing is, I was on my way to go play a cop! on TV! And you guys are busting me.

Speaking of your SVU character again, there was a Cameo you did for some John Mulaney fans, and they got you to poke fun at Fin Tutuola — that time that he took a long time to grasp the concept of sex addiction — and you played along, and that Cameo clip went viral. People ask you to say some really odd stuff.

I don’t even remember that one! On Cameo, most of the people just want you to say “hi” and “happy birthday” and anniversaries. There were some people who had a sixty-second wedding anniversary. When I first started Cameo, I didn’t think that was as cool as it was until I saw the reaction. When I saw the way that people reacted to cameos, I thought, “Oh, this is cool.” So there’s “tell my brother to stay in school,” or “congratulate my teen” for this or that, it’s a cool platform, and I enjoy doing ’em.

We are almost out of time here, but I’m a Body Count fan, and you guys won a Grammy this year. You once talked about your heavy metal influences, like Black Sabbath. Do you dig any particular contemporary metal bands?

We based our band off of Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies, and of course, Black Sabbath. I like Lamb of God and Fit for an Autopsy, which is the band of my producer (Will Putney). We’ve been out with so many bands. Of course, I like Power Trip, but it kind of sucks because this past year, we couldn’t tour. We put out Carnivore, and then the pandemic hit, so we dropped an album, and we haven’t been able to do a single show.

Do you know when touring will likely resume for you?

Everybody’s saying 2022, so we’re gonna come up with some other ways to get the music out to the fans. Right now we’re doing an EP to connect to Carnivore because we don’t wanna just step over that album like a dead body. We got a Grammy for it, so we’re trying to keep our fans entertained, so we’re thinking of different options. We just did a fan video for “The Hate Is Real.” Have you seen that, the one with the puppets?

Oh, I saw it on Twitter and did not click on it yet, so I’m doing fantastic here.

You’re gonna bug out on that one. I had a concept where I said, “The fans are gonna make the video,” and this one was the winner. It’s outrageous.

I’ll go watch it now, and it’s been real talking to you.

Well, keep following me and stay on Twitter. You never know what’s gonna happen, day by day. Someone might pop off, and I might need to let ’em have it.

‘Law and Order: Organized Crime’ debuts on April 1, and find out more about how to #TurnToCold via Tide’s website.