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I pre-ordered the book as soon as I saw online mentions of its availability (no nerdo). I think I was a little skeptical going in for a few reasons, but I did really enjoy reading it this week.
Despite 14 years of swimming around on this site and nearly twenty years of listening very closely to ?uest's records, I was wary of two things: 1) of the book being a straightforward rock bio (though, yeah more in the context of hip-hop and pop) - which I worried would register a little too light on my personal reading scale; and 2) of too much focus on celebrity encounter stories. It seemed that so much of the online/community encouragement of "?uest, you should really write a memoir" hearkened back to okp reviews/journals and that pre-Fallon celebrity stories post. I was glad the book stayed personal, Roots-focused, and music-centered for the most part. The few life-event/celebrity stories that did make it in are not treated as non sequiturs, but are coached in the context of ?uest's career and life in music. I dug that, and there are elaborations there that made them interesting and fun/funny beyond the accounts he's written online.
I recently also read Paul Devlin's (via Albert Murray) Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones. That was a very different work - a somewhat academic rendering of Jones' (awesome) self-stylized auditory memoir. Still wrapping my head around that one, and for me, it will demand re-reading much sooner than Mo Meta Blues. But there is a very interesting, relevant, and linking point within that book.
In the intro, Devlin writes to a specific Albert Murray essay about a dictated memoir written for Louis Armstrong. Despite Armstrong's half-assed but sincere interest in literature about his experiences, the biographer faced a huge challenge in balancing voice, grammar, clarity, message, etc. My takeaway was that Murray appreciated the work that was done to capture the essence of the stories, along with so much voice and context, while still producing something readable, which, to some degree, has to end up as something formal/traditional. I thought about these factors as I read Mo Meta Blues, and the writing really worked for me - there's a consistent and engaging 'voice' representing ?uest's stories and crafted experiences throughout the book, and it feels real - especially in communicating emotions like passion, confusion, frustration, nostalgia, etc. The language differs from that of ?uest's online persona (of course), but it doesn't read too stiff or constrained.
There was a lot of information in the book that I already knew a little about. From, well, being a fan (and longtime okayplayer). I'm low hanging fruit for Roots album sales and for eating up what ?uest has to say about his journey (and studio details, drum wisdom, artistic experiences, collaborations). But I loved the extra detail on Organix and DYWM, the context for Game Theory, and honest reflections on The Tipping Point. Each album is addressed with at least a thoughtful reflection (a little lighter for Illadelph and undun). I appreciated that the memoir didn't spend too much time on side projects, though I'm interested in learning more about some of them - elsewhere.
The only two loose ends - or loose beginnings - to me are around introductions. Not to backtrack on my point about celebrity stories, but there's no communication of how collaboration and friendship with Q-Tip and Erykah Badu came about (and maybe James Poyser while we're at it). I don't mention this out of specific interest in them as artists (though I listen to some of their stuff), and I acknowledge that many names and players mentioned in the book are not really introduced - wisely from an editing standpoint. But to me they seemed to be big enough players in ?uest's journey to feel like characters in the central narrative. But they're not really introduced or contextualized. Did this kind of stuff maybe fall to the cutting room floor?
Towards the end of the book the coverage of the recent years - necessarily - stands as 'facts-with-perspective,' moreso than 'history-with-insight.' This is natural, of course, and I'm happy to trade-off this for having to wait 10-20 years for a fuller life context autobiography. What's great though is that in the final pages, the themes, questions, focus, and thoughtfulness that run through the book thread all of these experiences together and resonate.
Yeah, that's my three word review: "thoughtful and resonant."
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