Sublime

He conducts an ongoing interrogation about what it all means. What’s black culture? What’s hip-hop? What are the responsibilities of a society and the people in it? And his inquiry isn’t bloodlessly academic, either; there’s something very consequential about his approach.

sometimes it was an African-American group wanting us to come over to UPenn.

The album opened up with a tribute to Dilla, “Dilltastic Vol Won(derful),” which sampled Slum Village.

Do You Want More?!!!??! was acid jazz, Illadelph Halflife was a kind of Wu-Tang–influenced hard hip-hop production, and Things Fall Apart was definitive neo soul. We were going into the cocoon again. I wasn’t worried about our audience. They would follow us or they wouldn’t—I was used to losing about half our audience each time and picking up new f

Twitter hadn’t arrived yet, so I went on the online community I had created, OkayPlayer, and asked, “Does anyone know about this guy? It’s one of the best demos I’ve heard since Jill Scott or Slum Village.”

But then there were the midlevel names, the singers and groups that had a strong following but weren’t moving fast-food-franchise numbers of units. At that point, Dr. Dre intervened and told Jimmy Iovine, the head of Interscope, which acts he thought were cool and should be kept on. He pointed the fickle finger of fate at Talib Kweli, at Mos Def, a

Questlove is a polymath—an

There was some goodwill in the bank, though: Scott Storch, who was an early part of the Roots’ success, had gone on to coproduce “Still D.R.E.,” which, as the lead single for Dr. Dre’s 2001, was a massive hit for Interscope in 1999, and had also worked with Christina Aguilera. Scott found favor with Jimmy and some of that rubbed off on us.

Sometimes when you delve into the past, it lets you down.