Photo of Questlove + Baratunde Thurston event taken by Ann Thuy Nguyen for Okayplayer.
Photo of Questlove + Baratunde Thurston event taken by Ann Thuy Nguyen for Okayplayer.
“Yes, The Roots can’t come back with no upbeat shit, not right now,” an audience member asserted to a friend as they walked out of the Pratt Institute‘s Memorial Hall Auditorium.
The overheard conversation took place after leaving the debut installation of the art school’s Conversations on Creativity with Questlove. The free and public discussion series featured The Roots‘ iconic polymath which took listeners and debaters with him inside the heads of influential artists. Last night, Questlove engaged comedian and writer Baratunde Thurston of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah fame about some intriguing topics.
Questo himself questioned his own motivations for making The Roots’ next studio album. Initially, he hoped to return to the feel good, “rhyming for the sake of riddling” from the band’s earlier discography, but he realized that this political moment may not allow him to. This edition of the new Pratt conversations centered on what motivates the creative, especially in references (The Partridge Family, Tom Selleck) that went over the heads of its millennial attendees. It also didn’t take long for the moderator, author Ben Greenman, to address “the elephant in the country”: the tangerine-tinted ruler of the free world.
“Trump is a revealer more than he is a thing unto himself,” Baratunde commented. He even credits our 45th president with moving him from a place of thought provoking rhetoric to action prompting movement.
Page: 1 2
The city of Memphis has released four videos showing the beating that killed Tyre Nichols… Read More
The Round-Up is Okayplayer’s weekly playlist of the best songs in the worlds of hip-hop… Read More
Fox has given two-season renewals to animated favorites The Simpsons, Family Guy and Bob's Burgers… Read More
In an interview with The Art of Dialogue, longtime G.O.O.D. Music act Consequence accused Pusha… Read More
Written by Karmeryn Alexa Carter, a book on 2020 Erykah Badu album New Amerykah Part Two… Read More
Styles P and Lil Yachty have dropped projects on this New Music Friday. Additional releases… Read More