? & A

“I’m well versed in rock music, because when you’re 11 watching MTV, you gotta wade through five hours of ‘99 Luft Balloons’ or Thomas Dolby just to get a ‘Thriller,’ so a lot of shit seeps in. We finally ended up having scouts that would just sit inside and watch all day until they’d scream, ‘BILLY JEAN!’ and we come running in from playing outside for three minutes and then it was someone else’s turn to be on watch.”

“Even though I’m the most vocal member of the group, I’m not the ring leader; The Roots are a democracy, so if you want something done your way you have to do a little Jedi mind action to make it happen. I try and re-invent our skin every time out in the studio. This time I didn’t want to write the songs over all our answering machines or in soundcheck in one city or another. I wanted to be sequestered. The Tipping Point evolved from a 30-day jam session where we had an open door policy, so everyone from the guy who lives down the street to Vernon Reid, Common, Jill Scott would stop by at any time and jump in. It was six to 12-hour sessions everyday. We then divided ourselves up into teams to wade through all the material until we came up with the good stuff and brought in people like Scott Storch our original Keyboard player ‘fifth Beatle,’ to help polish it off.”

“Austin Scaggs [at Rolling Stone] is damn near on my rolodex because every three weeks I have to give him a new quote on you know … Democratic National Convention, give me a quote Ahmir … Ray Charles died, give me a quote Ahmir … nanananahahh, give me a quote Ahmir, and it’s like, okay, I think the role I’m filling now for people is the guy who knows how to speak in complete sentences in hip-hop.” [“Without saying ‘bitch’, ‘bling’ or ‘ho’?” asks Sweet] “Right. But I don’t wanna play that role either because that’s absolutely not me. You ask my assistant; sometimes I have my days where I’m politically incorrect. So when I say all things to all people, hip-hop really allows you to be a three dimensional person. Just at the end of the day everybody is contradictory.”