"and the recording dynamic?

Well we don’t really record together per se, you know. My manager, Richard Nichols, who also executive produces a lot of The Roots stuff, he works with Greg P.O.R.N., who’s an MC who’s always featured on Roots albums, and Dice Raw, Karl Dice Jenkins, who is just pretty much my writing partner, the three of them collaborate often on music that will become The Roots music before it’s officially Roots music.

They’ll collaborate, as far as what their ideas are, for beats that may or may not work, and Dice will start coming up with choruses, and he’ll try and come up with a verse of his own, and P.O.R.N. usually comes up with one of the first verses out of our crew that I hear on any of our records. For all intensive purposes, they’re kind of like the – they’re the recording nucleus of The Roots. If we need to outsource a producer, or a musician, to get something right sonically, they’re kind of able to do that before Questlove and I have to approve everything or really come into the picture. Like I said, it’s an ongoing thing – whereas I’ve been working on this album – there’s some stuff that I recorded 6-8 months ago. Some beats that I’ve been listening to, a couple of different arrangements that I’ve been taking under consideration for the past year and a half or so. But, these – Rich Nichols, Dice Raw, Greg P.O.R.N., they’ve been actually working on this album for 3 years. It’s just weird. It’s a weird, dysfunctional – we’re like dysfunction junction. …but it works out in the end, kind of thing."


My guess is this has been the process since RD or HIGO.

Remember when RD was to be the last Roots album? Maybe it really was the last album recorded together so to speak.

May explain why some of us feel like they don't feel like Roots albums anymore, and speaks to the brand point made above...



Whole interview is here, good read.

http://rapverbiage.com/2014/03/08/black-thought/