Turn Down the Music and Read: Mo’ Meta Blues

My Advice to High School Grads An Open Letter to the Restoration Har...

Turn Down the Music and Read: Mo’ Meta Blues

One of the things I love most about reading is how it opens your world and makes space for dreams you never even knew you had. For instance, after finishing Mo’ Meta Blues by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, I now have but one dream: to drive cross country with Questlove, the car radio tuned to Backspin, the ‘80s and 90’s hip hop channel on Sirius XM, and have him explain to me the musical and cultural significance of every song we hear. Three thousand miles ought to just about skim the surface of what this brilliant musician and writer knows about music.

I didn’t know a whole lot about Questlove going into the book besides the fact that his band, The Roots, is now the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s late night show. That, and that the Roots are really terrible at playing Silent Library.

But this warm, funny, entertaining memoir turned me into a rest-of-my-life fan of Thompson, who is a walking music encyclopedia spanning decades and genres. A drummer and DJ, Thompson grew up in Philly in a show biz family, riding along as his parents performed R&B and soul in clubs and theaters during the 1970s. He was steeped in music, but from an early age it was apparent that he had a more deliberate, yearning need to understand and interact with it than your average musically-inclined child.

The night I bought the book, a friend who would know said, “Oh yeah, Questlove’s definitely on the Aspy scale,” alluding to Aspberger’s Syndrome, a developmental disorder related to autism and characterized by higher than average intellect along with repetitive patterns of interest and activities. Questlove points it out himself, how from a young age he was obsessed with the circles in vinyl albums, the face of a drum kit, and his own oversized ‘fro. But his ability to see connections between music and musicians, to dial back to the exact moment he heard not just a song but a particular phrase of a song, is exactly what makes him an able guide to the evolution of hip hop and rap.

At its heart, this is a book about a totally relatable, sweet guy. First: the pictures. OMG, he had that giant hairwoo from the time he was three. There’s a picture of him wearing a conductor’s cap and a tiny pair of striped overalls that made me melt. Second: his favorite game as a child was playing Record Store. Yes, he would take albums and set up merchandise displays in his bedroom, mimicking the Philly record stores that dotted his personal landscape. Questlove’s meticulous attention to detail was evident even at a young age. In the record store, those weren’t actual albums but posters of album covers that were on display, so in his determination to recreate the same curly edged effect of the paper posters with his albums…he cracked the edges of his vinyl collection

Third: he’s just as much a dope when he meets a celebrity as you and I would be. Prince was his number one favorite musician, for so many reasons, but when Questlove finally meets him, he absolutely loses his beans. It’s a hysterical and very honest scene that a less confident man or more egotistical musician would have dropped completely, but the book is better for it. And Questlove seems just that much more human.

Once you read Mo’ Meta Blues you’ll feel like you’ve had the best crash course in American hip-hop/rap/soul ever. It’s a perfect summer read, even if you’re not a huge fan of the music genre.

And here’s another reason to buy it: it’s published by the Hachette Book Group, the one currently in conflict with Amazon over its monopolistic distribution policies. Why not walk into a local indie bookstore this weekend and pick your copy up off the shelf?

So now I have to get myself educated about the Roots, and I’m following Questlove’s syllabus. How I Got Over is their midlife reflection album, so I’m starting there.