Mo' Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove Hardcover – June 18, 2013

I love this book. It's like a short history of hip hop, The Roots, Questlove, and more. He brings up so many good points. Music is a language. It's always communicating something. This book gives an honest and clear look at where hip hop came from, where it might be going, the dilemmas and joys of music-making and movement-making, and all the important questions at hand. I am in love with the perspective and appreciate for music shown by Questlove. I am a music teacher, and as such, his use of albums like textbooks is perfection to me. I am so excited about this book. And what's more, it's an easy and enjoyable read. You won't want to put it down!
"The exceptions don't prove the rule. They shame it. They banish it." ~ Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, pg. 56

"Music has the power to stop time but music also keeps time."

Mo' Meta Blues was a delightful musical journey. Sure Thompson shared the details of his life but it was more like the soundtrack of his life.
I appreciated the fact that this book was not structured like a chronological biography. There were memos from the publisher, footnotes from The Roots comanager, and extended playlists spread throughout the text.

"When you live your life through records, the records are a record of your life."

There was not a time when music was not apart of Thompson's life. His parents had a band and Thompson likened them to Johnny Cash and June Carter. Thompson was tapping out patterns at eight months old which blossomed into a drumming career. He obsessed over album reviews and covers. The small details and obscure facts that he shared throughout the book about certain pieces of music, groups, and individuals kept the book interesting.

It is no secret that Thompson is a Prince fan and his affinity for the artist is as prominent in the book as is his presence in The Roots band. The Roots individually and as a band come together and take shape in the text but those experiences do not overshadow or dominate. It's quite obvious that Ahmir and Tariq "Black Thought" are total opposites but make for a great balance within the band. Only a few weeks prior to reading this book I found out that Scott Storch was an original member of The Roots. Thompson mentioned Storch but considering his rise and fall in hip-hop I expected and wanted more details in regards to their relationship.

This would not be a legit hip-hop memoir unless the Source Music Awards of 1995 were mentioned. Thompson referred to the show as hip-hop's funeral. While making a swift exit from the show, Thompson was given a demo cassette of an artist who would leave his mark on neo-soul and R & B music for years to come. That artist was D'Angelo. The highlight of the bio was how Thompson came to know local Philly youngsters before they became the famous neo-soul artists we are now so familiar with. How he described meeting Alicia Keys had to be my favorite celebrity moment of the entire book.

Thompson has a wealth of knowledge about music that is astonishing but was in no way hubris in his presentation. The footnotes provided by The Roots comanager, Rich, gave even more depth to the narratives. The ending was a bit abstract which was my only complaint with the book.

I've been a fan of The Roots since the mid-nineties. Wwhat initially attracted me to them was the interplay between the live band behind the rapping, thus merging two forms of music that I had love since I was a little kid but up till then had seen as mutually exclusive, at least in what would truly be categorized as hip hop (vs. rock rap like 311 or Rage Against The Machine). Anyway, I already digress.
When I found out that Questlove had written a book, I can honestly say I had mixed feelings, first because on a number of music-related films I've seen in recent years, the camera would turn to him as this sage-like authority on music, and he seemed all to pleased to play the part, making me wonder if he was full of himself. On top of that, when I heard The Roots took a gig as a backing band on a late night talk show, as much as I respect an artist's freedom of direction and need to make money and have an audience, I couldn't keep the term "sellout" from popping up in my head. Nevertheless, the high ratings on this site suggested this book would be a worthwhile read, and were they ever right!
If you haven't already lost interest in this review, unless you're both a musician and a voracious reader, you probably will soon since my reasons for loving this book are very personal. Still, it moved me so much I just felt the need to testify.
Now the review begins in earnest:
What moved me most about this book is the fact that Questlove, like me, is clearly a musician, music lover, and a voracious reader of both reviews (are you reading this?) and books about music. He states early on that like me, musician autobiographies are one of his favorite kinds of books, and that when he decided to write one, he decided to take an avant garde approach to writing it by including atypical elements like memos from the co-author to the editor, a soundtrack to his early life (precisely what I have students of mine do and have considered writing an entire book on myself), and a sort of foil to his voice in their long-term road manager, who at first gets his own chapters but ultimately, and I'd say more effectively, gets a sort of veto power in the form of footnotes. At first, the skeptic in me saw all this as a shallow gimmick, but it didn't take too long for me to view it as a brilliant remix to the format of what's become (I believe) the best selling non-fiction genre: the memoir.
In terms of pure content, the book serves as a fantastic first-hand retrospective of hip hop's golden era in the nineties, not to mention a delivery room recounting of the birth (and ultimately death?) of what ist sadly seeming like a brief and wonderful hybrid of hip hop and R&B in neo soul. The list of names present at the house party jam sessions at his place in Philly contained the bulk of the roster of artists who revolutionized my concept of what could be done with music between 1999 and the mid-O's.
Genres aside, this is ultimately the story of a person who has dedicated his existence to music while rarely compromising his principles (yes, I'm deliberately contradicting my earlier accusation). This struck such a chord with me because I have put a massive portion of my adult life into developing my skills in creating music. It is partially the lack of desire to compromise my principles that has kept me from "making it big," but another part of it is not being able to find a band that is willing to stick it out long enough to make a name for itself. In Questlove's impressively honest recounting of Tthe Roots' existence as a band, he shows what a challenge and a rollercoaster it is to keep a band going. From the hand-to-mouth struggles of their early days to the mixed reactions to their later albums, it's evident that it's been no walk in the park for the roots and Questlove, who is clearly his own separate institution on so many levels, but it seems like it was (and continues to be) all worth it.
To go back to my earlier comment on the TV gig, reading his explanation of it makes total sense to me, and it looks like it's actually been a phenomenal boon to the band. I don't normally watch TV, but I'm now curious to see them do their thing on that show since it sounds like there's lots of love, intelligence, wit and hard work going into it.
The last element I'd like to address is his love for music. Like Questlove, I would call music my one overt addiction (I even recorded a song about it back in the days of my Tascam 4-track called "Musical Junky"). To hear Questlove talk about his genre-spanning appreciation of music hit home so hard, especially the element of having certain songs and artists that you kind of secretly appreciate. (I thought that I was the only one who frequently skips tunes on my iPod to avoid shame when friends are listening.) The last detail that really jumped out was when he mentioned DJing and not playing his own stuff when he does it. It's a trip to hear someone at that level make a statement like that, but let's just say I know exactly what he means. It's one thing to put your songs out there with a band on stage, but when playing them next to other artists' tunes that have the dance floor moving, what if people clear the floor like what happened in the club in Florida? That was a super poignant detail in the book, but it also shows how the art of music is not only about selling records and making people want to shake that thing, and for that I am very thankful for all Questlove and other uncompromising artists like him have done.
P.S. After reading what I wrote, I realized I didn't address my earlier suspicions about him being full of himself. In getting to understand him better, I realized that he really is a sage-like authority on music, which is why documentarians more in the know than me sought him out for his input. I'd actually say that after reading this book, I'd consider him to be impressively humble and practical.