I’ve got to thank my man Chuck for this one.
If you want to know who inspired the creation of this site, I’d have to narrow it down to two people. Donald Faison, who was the first person I was aware of to use the word “blerd” and as such, provided the name to this site, is one. The second? Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson: all-star drummer, producer, and blerd extraordinaire. My original thought was that there weren’t any music-intensive sites of an eclectic nature run by a black guy (at least none that I knew of…), so…yeah, if anyone knows Quest, bring him here and tell him that he inspired this (at least partially.)
At any rate, I think this dude has a killer book in him somewhere simply based on the liner notes on the Roots albums (the story of how “Break You Off” came to be is worth a book deal all by himself.) Want more proof that a Questo book would fly off the shelves? Check this out. It’s a series of anecdotes about Questlove’s experiences with various superstars. They range from down-to-earth (Jay and Beyonce are regular folks, apparently) to hilarious (getting cockblocked while hanging out with Gabrielle Union) to wistful (apparently his relationships with former classmates Amel Larrieux and Boyz II Men have been compromised a bit over the years.) Regardless of the tone of the story, what sticks with me most is that these aren’t, like, celebrity shoulder-rubbing stories. Questlove is obviously a music fan first, and comes across as a regular dude, albeit a regular dude with a collection of “Soul Train” episodes that I would probably murder someone for.
(and yeah, I realize this isn’t exactly news…it doesn’t seem as though the site has been updated for a while…but hey, this isn’t a news site, per se…just the ramblings of a bunch of demented pop culture junkies!!)
Oh, yeah. Did you know that Undun, The Roots’ new album, comes out in a couple of weeks?
We blessed you guys with the “Make My” single a couple weeks back. Now, the video has arrived…sort of.
It’s only two minutes long, and this is apparently one of four parts. I mentioned in my piece about the song how the album is supposed to follow a narrative arc? This is some proggy, borderline pretentious type shit, but you know what? If anyone can pull this off successfully, it’ll be The Roots.