And I really don’t understand the Malik situation.

I LOVE Malik and think he and Thought were on the same level of Big and Dre and Ghost and Rae and Hav and P...etc.

I loved them as a duo.

But if you’re in a group and one member is not putting in the same amount of work, why do the rest have to go the extra mile for that one person.

I’ve been to multiple Roots shows in the Northeast and have never seen Malik there. So why would anyone expect his cut to be the same as the rest when their bread and butter was touring. That’s where they made money and he refused to go for whatever reason. It’s doesn’t matter if it was an addiction or just simply not wanting to be on the road. Bottom line is that he wasn’t there.

Also, he wasn’t on every song. Now that may be because The Roots played him and purposely kept him off but that has not been the story at all. It just seemed Malik was one of those dudes that did what he wanted and he wasn’t concerned with being a big time rapper. Like he did the shit on the side lol.

As far as the addiction, I think it’s pretty clear there was a problem there because all sides have said that. The issue seems to be how it was handled. Jag seems to think they didn’t do enough. But let’s be realistic. We all have friends with struggles and as you get older and life happens and your responsibilities grow, it’s harder to continuously help people in those positions, especially after you have tried and tried.

None of us are at liberty to say how much The Roots did or didn’t do for Malik and we can’t just sit here and take Jag’s word for it either. I just think we need to all be realistic and mature enough to understand how life works.

You are a group maintaining and trying to grow your popularity so you can keep making music and doing what you love and in order to do so, you’re on the road 300+ days out of the year. One member is deciding not to take part in that work. Who here would say “yeah you stay home and we will do all this work and at the end of the day we will still split the pie evenly”? Not one of us! On top of that this member has issues that they’re dealing with that you’re trying to help with but ultimately can’t seem to influence for a number of reasons. At some point, you can’t care more than the person.

It just seems like we have a hard time putting ourselves in others shoes and seeing the story from all angles. I mean, I just typed that and at the same time I am also shitting on ?uest in this post for other things. Right is right and wrong is wrong.

None of us have the entire story but certain things just don’t add up.

I will also add on that everything I said has nothing to do with her claims of the sexual assault, etc. as that is a different situation and a very serious one in my opinion. I won’t comment on that as the people involved need to sort that out.

Also, the Hub situation, if true is also some complete bullshit on The Roots part.