Quotes from Black Thought

I think at the end of the day the diversity has served as a major... that's what has determined the difference between The Roots and some of the other artists from our graduating class. I feel we followed the De La Soul, the Native Tongue blueprint.

So in my personal opinion, I definitely feel like I'm a legendary emcee, and I also feel like we're a legendary brand, which is why I started rebranding ourselves years ago by saying 'The Legendary Roots Crew,' which is how we're introduced on 'The Tonight Show.'

The Tonight Show' afforded us the opportunity to work with The Muppets and other 'Sesame Street' characters, and we always had the desire to do something that spoke to young people.

I remember when I was 15 or 16 years old, I couldn't imagine what life would be like past the age of 30, just because I didn't know that many men who had lived beyond their 20s.

There's a lot of terms we come up with for the music that we're making because we want something that's going to be definitive. Often there is no word to encapsulate the emotion that the music represents.

When I was coming up, a freestyle wasn't a freestyle unless everything was completely improvised, in-the-moment and right there, and you had to incorporate various elements of what was going on in the room on the day.

Lots of people are saying that I shut down mumble rap in one 10-minute setting. But that wasn't my intention, because mumble rap - if we go back - that's something I invented.

The Roots - we signed our first record deal when I was about 19 years old.

When people see that we're signed to Def Jam, the perception has changed.

I move in silence. I don't like puttin' too much of me out there to be dissected, analyzed.

Nah, I don't feel overlooked, underappreciated, or none of that because it's a short list of artists, past and present, that I kind of have respect for. And in all of those situations, the admiration and respect is mutual.

There probably won't be an animated The Roots or Black Thought as there was, say, an animated Michael Jackson when 'The Jackson 5' cartoon show was on when we were kids.

I love Trader Joe's.

I don't sit down and write a song, and then slam down the phone like, 'We got another one!' and pop some champagne. It's like if someone's writing a novel: You write a series of drafts.

To be in a band with the other founding members that never sleep is inspiring. Questlove put out five books a year and deejays every night and still do the same day job that I do, only with more responsibility. It drives me to find a way to juggle it.

For some music, lyrically, the best move is to keep it simple in what it is that you are saying, and just kind of come across in your rhythm and the way that you lock in on the music.

You can't expect every idea of yours to stick or even come to fruition, you have to make sacrifices for the greater good of the team.

I feel like the youthful experience is what drives the creativity, and I feel like experience and maturity as an adult, experience as an elder statesman, that refines it.

I think the true artist - musician, dancer, writer, actor - a true artist is able to sort of articulate pain and tragedy, in a way that sort of expresses what the listener or the beholder may have been feeling but was less able to communicate.

A lot of our earlier material was freestyle tunes.

I miss being out on the road.

I got a family to take care of and kids to feed. That's my motivation, this is my job.

Although there are people who regard 'Do You Want More?!!!??!' as our first major release, I think 'Things Fall Apart' was the real arrival of The Roots, so to speak.

If hip-hop is dead, then let it rest in peace and let's move on to something else.