Tariq Trotter Opens Up About Childhood and Forming The Roots

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And while we await that progress, next we turn to one of America’s most brilliant lyricists, Tariq Trotter, of The Roots, better known as Black Thought. The Grammy winning artist has wowed audiences for decades with his live performance skills. Some music critics contend that he’s one of the greatest rappers of all time. Now, Black Thought is out with a memoir examining a life that began with tragedy. Both his mother and father were murdered. The book is called “The Upcycled Self,” and he discusses it now with Hari Sreenivasan.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Tariq Trotter, also known as Black Thought to most of us who have listened to him for so many years as part of The Roots, thanks so much for joining us. First of all, congratulations on this book. I am not surprised that you’re venturing out into this sort of written word expression. What does “The Upcycled Self” mean?

TARIQ “BLACK THOUGHT” TROTTER, CO-FOUNDER, THE ROOTS AND AUTHOR, “THE UPCYCLED SELF”: I’m from Philadelphia from a specific place and time there, where, you know, you had to sort of move through life with a layer of scar to — of callus, right? Of scar tissue, almost as a protective sort of thing, you know, and it serves a purpose at — you know, one time in your life, or at least it may. And then, as we evolve, as we, you know, mature, as we move on in life, you know, these things no longer service in the same way. So, the upcycle self, it speaks to, you know, the wisdom it takes to recognize when to, you know, leave a thing in the past, to adapt a way or, you know, to move forward in a different way.

SREENIVASAN: You start out this book with something I suspect anybody would want to leave in the past and it’s a horrendous story of you setting your house on fire as a little kid playing with toys, you know, being a curious kid and starting a fire with your TV. What were some of the repercussions of that event?

TROTTER: Yes. You know, the book actually begins with the fire. It took place when I was six years old. I burned my — you know, my family home down. And, yes, I think, you know, the story to follow puts you in into the mind of — you know, the story is told in the spirit of the phoenix. So, I’m — you know, I think I very much emerged, you know, from the flame. So, it begins with the fire, even though that wasn’t my first traumatic experience, even at that young age, it was — you know, it was a watershed moment in that way. And it was a moment — it was my earliest memory of a time after which, you know, things would never be the same, you know. But, you know, talk about just curiosity, right, of a child and the tremendous amount of grace and wisdom that it took my mother, you know, for her to extend and not come home, you know, after having lost everything and sort of, you know, (INAUDIBLE) her main concern was that no one had been hurt. And, you know, I wasn’t mad that I wasn’t punished in the way that I’d expected to be. And I think, there’s beauty and there was a — there was great value in that. And my mother sort of recognizing that it was my curiosity and it was my, you know, imagination that led to — you know, to the event. So, she was able to help me — you know, to encourage me to lean into that curiosity and into that imagination by getting into the arts.

SREENIVASAN: So, what did that do to your mom, do you think? I mean, because she had worked so hard to — you know, your father had been murdered earlier, and she was raising you two, and she’s built all these things. She saved up. She’s kind of built something normal for the two of you as normal as can be, and then to literally see it go up in smoke, what does that do to her psyche? What did you find out over time?

TROTTER: It really — I mean, over time, I came to realize just the tremendous amount of strength and, you know, resilience that she had. Because you think back, you know, when she lost my father, my father was very young. He was, you know, maybe 26. My mother was still very young. When you — at the time, there’s no way that she could have fully recovered because I think maybe — you know, maybe four years or so had passed if that. So, yes, she was — the whole family was still very much in the grieving process. You know, so this was sort of, you know, back-to-back loss in that way that, yes, I mean, you know, we should have been and could have, you know, been devastating, but, it wasn’t in many ways.

SREENIVASAN: So, who were the men that you looked at as role models or father figures during this impressionable time?

TROTTER: My earliest examples of manhood, you know, aside from, you know, what I saw in my grandparents, like in my — you know, my father’s father, who I saw, you know, rarely and in my mother’s stepfather who I referred to as my grandfather, they were sort of the examples. But then there were — you know, the gentlemen that were in my mother’s life. So, the people that my mother would date, my mother’s male friends, a colorful cast of characters, you know, set many examples. Some were good examples, some were bad, you know. But yes, that was sort of what I had. And I had, again, my older brother, who, for all intents and purposes, was away from the family because he spent — you know, he essentially came to adulthood in juvenile — in the juvenile justice system and then, you know, you graduated.

SREENIVASAN: Your mom figured out somehow that your curiosity also translated into the ability for you to express yourself artistically, and she pushed you into that. How did she do that?

TROTTER: I think the earliest indication of, you know, her sort of understanding that thing, that dynamic was, you know, just in her encouraging me to take art classes I think in the summer. Well, you know, even before I took visual art classes, my mother, she signed me up for choir and, you know, she’d always encouraged me to sort of lean into music. But when she found out visual art was sort of my thing, then she was really, really just super supportive of that. And, yes, she — you know, at every turn she would, register me for a thing. Anything that was free, I was definitely going to do, but you know, the — all the other things that we — anything we could afford or save up for she also would encourage.

SREENIVASAN: You also are very vulnerable in this book and you write about some very painful moments. In terms of your mom, you basically have kind of a scene that you play out, and it’s to try to essentially rescue her from what would be a crack house. What was that like?

TROTTER: I mean, you know, it was — that may have been — I mean, I think about low points of my life, you know, dark moments. You know, I don’t know that I’ve ever been as resigned as, you know, just sad and down, you know, bad as I was in that moment. I mean, it’s something that I think I’ve grappled with, over the years when you’re in that moment. You know, I went to go — you know, I was — we’ve been looking for my mom for a period of days, you know, a couple of days have gone by and I tracked her down and she was in a drug house. And, yes, you know, I thought I was, you know, showing up like the calvary. I was there to — you know, to save my mom, you know, take her out of this place. And, no, it was the heart — I had to accept the harsh reality of just, you know, the matter of fact that she, in that moment, preferred to remain, right? She didn’t want to leave.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

TROTTER: So, I couldn’t convince her to leave. And it was — yes, that was — it was just a super gut-wrenching moment for me as a young person, you know, because I was — I mean, you know, as I recall, I may have been — I was 14 — you know, 13 or 14 years old.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. Later in the book, you were — you’re not living with your mom. You’re someplace else. How did you find out that your mother was dead?

TROTTER: Yes. My mother was murdered when I was — I think I just turned 16 — or somewhere between 15 and 16 my mother was murdered. I moved out of the City of Philadelphia to Michigan, to Southfield, Michigan, right outside Detroit, to stay with an uncle, with my — one of my father’s brothers who I never met, you know, just because, the streets had gotten so crazy. My neighborhood was crazy. Lots of my friends were, you know, being murdered or, you know, sent to prison. And it was — you know, it was the middle of, you know, 1980s drug crack epidemic and everything that sort of came along with it. So, my family has sent me to Michigan for a while and, you know, it didn’t work out in Michigan, but when I came back to Philly, it was — we were — we had agreed that I wouldn’t return to my old neighborhood. So, no, I wasn’t living with my mother. I was staying in an apartment that my grandparents own. She was sort of living her life and I was living mine. I had school. I had work. And, you know, days, sometimes weeks will go by without us, you know, seeing one another, but we would speak on the phone. And I just remember, there was a period, during which a few days had gone by when no one in the family had heard from or seen my mother, which also, again, wasn’t, you know, out of, out of the norm, right? And over, you know, a period of days through that process of elimination, my mother was identified as a Jane Doe who had, you know, turned up in the morgue. So, yes. And, you know, the way I found out, I mean, it was — I don’t know, I think my whole family, you know, even by that point, had become to just experiences that would otherwise be, you know, life shattering, traumatic experience for other people. We were just so used to loss and grief that, yes, I don’t know that they pulled any punches. I don’t know that — I think, you know, they — my aunt, as I recall, my aunt and my grandmother, so, you know, two — my grandmother and her sister just confirmed with me that the body, the Jane Doe that had been, you know, found that we suspected was my mother. Yes, that was that Cassie. You know — and, you know, we just started to move, move forward with the arrangements. You know, it was — it’s wild. I didn’t even — I don’t remember having shed a tear during my mother’s death until I saw her body being, you know, lowered into the ground.

SREENIVASAN: At that time, you’re also at a creative arts high school, the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, CAPA, right? And we know who they are now, but who was in that high school at the time that was, I guess, your competition, your classmates, your peers that were also performers that went on to be more successful?

TROTTER: I went to that school, which was sort of Philadelphia’s version of LaGuardia in New York City, or, you know, like “Fame.” It was like “Fame,” the TV series and the film. And, yes, I was a visual arts major, but there were just very many singers and instrumentalists there who were already, you know, forces to be reckoned with in their own right. So, Questlove who, you know, he and I met there and started The Roots, but there was also Boys II Men, who before they even came together as Boys II Men were parts of, you know, other male ensembles who, you know, just beautiful, you know, harmonies. And, you know, so it was — walking through the halls of that school made me feel the way it must have felt to, you know, like in the days of Corner Boy do up (ph), you know what I’m saying? They would be — yes, at any given moment, someone will break out into song, you’ll turn a corner and there’d be one yay and nay, you know, working on a harmony. So, it was that. And it was a huge confidence builder for me. You know, and I mean, to see kids that I knew, you know, doing — like going on, you know, to onboard a network.

SREENIVASAN: So how did you and Ahmir Questlove find each other?

TROTTER: Questlove and I found each other in the principal’s office, where we were — yes, it probably wasn’t the first time we — you know, we’re in the space together, but we were like two ships of, you know, passing each other at sea in the night. usually, and it was — in this instance, I think I was going — I was on my way out on a suspension, which, you know, I got suspended sometimes. So, I was there. I’d done something and I was being suspended from school. So, I was in the office and, Quest walked in. I think he was bringing like flowers and apples to the faculty. And he had on a jacket, a hand painted denim jacket, which was one of my side hustles at the time was I would do hand painted denim, like, you know, jeans and jackets and I would sell them, you know, really out of my locker. So, the jacket that he wore that day and I think maybe his necklace too that he had on was a sort of the gateway to a dynamic that will grow where, you know, I was able to put him on to parts of the elements of the culture and, you know, hip hop music that he had been exposed to yet and vice versa. And, you know, we became an odd couple and we remain as such. I think, you know, maybe both of us, you know, just had a desire to — you know, for brotherhood, to experience that brother, because even though I had a brother, I still hadn’t really experienced that dynamic in the way that, you know, other siblings had. So, it was great, yes, to have a brother at that time. And then, our relationship evolved into something else when it became a business relationship and it evolved into, now, what is a marriage. Yes, yes.

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

TROTTER: We went from brotherhood to marriage.

SREENIVASAN: So, I wonder, you formed this group, at the time it wasn’t called The Roots, right? What was it called?

TROTTER: Before we were called The Roots, we were called Square Roots.

SREENIVASAN: Square. That’s right. So, Square Roots. And I wonder, the Square Roots, in the type of influences that you were mixing to make the type of music that you wanted to make and put that in the context of what was happening at the time, because what we see of The Roots now, which is a mix of so many different influences, is not what was kind of playing on the streets and the car stereos as you were growing up and this group was starting.

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TROTTER: Yes. I think, you know, it was a huge challenge, because not only did we not, you know — like, we didn’t look. We didn’t have the same, you know, aesthetic as our contemporaries at the time, nor did we sound or feel — nor did, like, our music sound or feel like theirs. So, you know, in a mixtape, mixed radio show era, The Roots music sort of stood out like a sore thumb. And it’s wild that, you know, it stood out in its musicality, you know?

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

TROTTER: Because we it was live instrumentation, and it just didn’t feel like — you know, the standard at that time, because it just felt more electronic, and, you know, we had to fight to represent those influences, right, in order to — you know, to expand sort of the palette of the culture, you know? And, it’s something that — you know, I mean, it’s taken some time, but I think over time, we — The Roots has, you know, been hugely responsible for reestablishing that standard. And, you know, now you see, you know, folks who go out to tour, to do gigs, studio sessions, you rarely see — I mean, even within the realm of hip hop, people who don’t use live instrumentation.

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SREENIVASAN: Is there — you have been in so many different formats. You write about the fact that you were a graffiti artist, at the time, that could be considered vandalism, depending on who saw your work, right? You’ve done visual arts. You’ve been rhyming for decades. Here you are writing a book. I mean, what is it about self-expression that keeps you wanting to try it in another format?

TROTTER: It’s the challenge of taking on a new sort of format, working in a new medium of allowing, you know, one discipline to inform another, it keeps me engaged. And, you know, I always meet, you know, folks, sometimes it’s one person, sometimes it’s 10, sometimes it’s more, but, you know, if there’s one person that, you know, my work, my story has resonated with in a way that, you know, has, you know, given them any deeper insight into themselves or into their story, then it’s worth it. You what I mean? And that is — you know, it’s a two-sided therapy, right? Like, this is my — like, this is — it’s — the work, the process is cathartic for me in that way. So, yes, I just keep, you know, accepting new challenges because there’s nothing that — you know, I mean, there’s so many people that I’ve seen come from Philadelphia and try a thing and win. And those who have won, all those many people who I’m able to list who have won, they have won because they didn’t give up. You know what I mean?

SREENIVASAN: Yes.

TROTTER: So, you know, I feel like if anything, any challenge that that I take on, as long as I stick to it, I’m going to be able to see it through to fruition.

SREENIVASAN: The book is called “The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are.” Author Tariq Trotter, also known as Black Thought from the Roots, thank you so much for your time.

TROTTER: Thank you. This has been awesome. Thank you so much.