One of the most difficult yet profound expressions of love is to take someone you care about to task for ridiculous behavior. I love Questlove as much as anyone could a man whom they’ve never met, which is why I’ve been pinching the bridge of my nose wondering what exactly in the shit is going on with him as of late.
Ahmir Thompson is one of Hip-Hop’s preeminent cognoscenti – a title he’s earned after more than three decades as the head of the Voltron that is the genre’s greatest band, The Roots. His pen – which he often uses to impart his nonpareil knowledge of damn near all music genres – has commanded respect for years, whether on the OkayPlayer boards of yore, the gem-filled jacket art of The Roots albums or his flamin’ hot takes on social media.
So, when Questo writes or says anything out of pocket, it’s not exactly a Boosie Badazz-esque act of anticipated f***ery – it catches everyone by surprise. Problem is, he’s been surprising us a lot lately.
The first alarm went up in February when he came for Black woman-owned apparel brand Legendary Rootz. Founder Raven Gibson scored a massive win by getting her brand placed in retail giant Target during Black History Month.
Questo, making the Manute Bol-caliber reach that early-30-something Gibson lifted her brand name from the “Legendary Roots Crew” nickname that The Roots went by intermittently when she was still in preschool in the 1990s, asked on Instagram, “What in the McDowell’s is this,” prompting several of his three million followers to drag Gibson.
When told that Gibson didn’t deserve that treatment, he doubled down in the comments of his post, insisting like Jerry Maguire that he’s “Mister Black Women.”
Okay fine…maybe that was a one-off…a lapse in judgment. But a couple months later, Questlove added his opinion to the Drake-Kendrick Lamar beef dialogue with the most insipid, fake-deep take to ever come from an actual Hip-Hop legend:
In suggesting that all rap beef is bad and dangerous, it’s as if Questo forgot that beef has undergirded Hip-Hop since its inception: “I’m better than you...what’s good, fool?” is the foundational axiom of 90-plus percent of bars ever written by anyone. Battle rap events have existed since time immemorial and, to my knowledge, don’t typically end with scores of emcees murdered in the parking lot.
Before hitting “post” on that shit, Questo also clearly didn’t consider that every Hip-Hop fan over 35 remembers when he played a visible role in one of the biggest Hip-Hop beefs of all time: backing Jay-Z’s performance of Nas diss “The Takeover” for Jay’s 2001 “MTV Unplugged” album.
It’s ironic to see him write “Hip-Hop is Truly Dead” in reference to the one event that has breathed more life into the genre than anything else in more than a decade. Drake and Kendrick had mainstream media doing on-air explainers of Hip-Hop songs for the first time ever. “Not Like Us” broke streaming records. Folks in Japan are writing raps to “#BBLDRIZZY” for chrissakes. If this is dead Hip-Hop, I’d love to see what it looks like breathing and upright.
The proverbial camel back-breaking straw driving this piece is Questo’s recent interview on the “One Song” podcast, during which he said 2Pac’s “Hit ‘Em Up” — one of the top five most legendary diss tracks of all time — is “disqualified” because of…the interpolation of the Dennis Edwards classic “Don’t Look Any Further,” which he called “dinner music.”
Interesting to hear the cat who co-created one of the greatest industry disses of all time over a beat that would be at home on BET’s “Video Soul” suggest that a diss track needs a mid-1990s Onyx beat to “qualify.”
The barrage of negative responses prompted Questlove to double down on some trite “this is a distraction we have bigger things to worry about” shit while also doubling down on how rap beef is apparently the leading cause of death for Black men aged 18-27 or something.
Disliking “Hit ‘Em Up” is no big deal in a bubble. But since his negative opinion on a beloved rap classic is just the latest in a couple months of mind-boggling takes, maybe that take is a darling he should’ve killed – or just left in the group chat.
I’m not sure what triggered Questlove’s angry-man-yells-at-cloud era. I know intimately that defiance grows with age, and he’s a decade older than I am. But as someone who is excited to check out his upcoming book, “Hip-Hop is History,” I’m now concerned that it’ll be loaded with takes that’ll prompt me to use it to stabilize a wobbly table.
I hope that he takes a break from the bad takes and stops chipping away at his well-deserved positive legacy. I also hope that he takes a break from attacking folks he believes are trying to jack his trademarks — because The Root is one letter away from his band name and we don’t want that smoke.