Image via Reebok
Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter’s voice has been ringing out on records since 1987. A founding member and lead MC of Philadelphia’s legendary The Roots crew, Trotter is known for commanding the microphone in a way that few can. His all-in-one bag of technical dexterity, booming voice, and sharp wit makes his social commentary just as potent as his braggadocios bars. He’s the kind of artist who can lead The Roots on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and then turn around and drop a Funkmaster Flex freestyle that your favorite rapper tweets about. It’s this combination that also made him the perfect candidate to perform a spoken-word piece last week at Reebok’s Spoken Rights event, the beginning of a revival of the Human Rights Now! campaign.
Originally held in 1988 through a partnership with Reebok, the Human Rights Now! concert featured some of the era’s biggest names including Bruce Springsteen, Sting, and Tracy Chapman. The nonprofit initiative was intended to bring attention to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the internationally recognized document that enshrines rights and freedoms to all human beings, as well as the organization Amnesty International.
For 2021, Reebok is bringing back the Human Rights Now! concept with a new collection of sneakers and apparel including the Classic Leather and Club C, a $270,000 donation to RISE (a nonprofit that aims to improve race relations within the sports community), and the return of the Reebok Human Rights Award Program honoring young human rights activists. The brand kicked things off last Friday in Brooklyn with the Spoken Rights event.
We caught up with Trotter shortly after his performance to get his thoughts on the Human Rights Now! revival, his approach to collaborations, how The Roots would fare in a Verzuz, and more. The interview, lightly edited for clarity, appears below.
Just off the bat, what inspired the poem that you have today at the event?
I think my piece was inspired by a desire to be seen and heard. I try to put myself in the head space of people who are…I guess I try to put myself in the head space of people who feel voiceless and unseen. That’s pretty much it. Working in a different medium for me is always a little more challenging than the obvious. If I were writing a song or putting in months together for anything else, it has a different weight to it. If you say, OK—you’re writing a poem, you’re writing a piece. I try and remain so mindful that there is sort of an overarching theme. I try not to put too much weight on it, just let it come together naturally. When I did the performance, I still wound up breaking out at the end into some bars, having to quote some of my own bars. I almost couldn’t resist.
I was doing some research on the original Human Rights Now! concert and the history of it. I noticed that they did a stop in Philadelphia in September of 1988. Do you have any memories of that?
I vaguely remember when the Human Rights Now! concert came through Philly. I just remember there were some big names, Bruce Springsteen and Sting, and artists of that caliber of the day. It was compelling to see the artists collectively come together in the name of what they saw as their civic duty and responsibility as artists and responsibility as role models. The power and influence they recognized put them in a really unique position. I feel like this is part of a trend that, it didn’t begin in the ‘80s, but I first noticed as a young person in the ‘80s. People coming together, artists coming together for one sort of common cause, à la “We Are the World,” and stuff like that.
One thing I noticed about the campaign is that a lot of the themes and a lot of the things that it’s pushing, they feel like they’re just as relevant and important today as they were back in the ‘80s. I wanted to kind of get your view on the way some things have progressed in a good way since then and some of the aspects that you think still need the most work.
I think what’s good is that we are still here. Society is still here. The people are sort of are still here and pressing on. The sad truth, the hard truth is that before we were in the midst of this global COVID pandemic, there were all sorts of other global pandemics that existed: ongoing crisis poverty, police violence, overmilitarization, and the list goes on and on. That’s the sad truth of it.
I feel like very much has changed, much more has not. That’s why organizations like Human Rights Now! and RISE and so many for-profit and nonprofit organizations that exist still have so much important work to do.
Absolutely. I’ve been listening to The Roots’ music probably since the mid-’90s. I know one thing that sticks out to me [in the music] is there’s always those themes of social and racial justice. When you seek out a collaborative partner or when someone comes to you with a pitch, is it important that their mission statement and their values align with what you do?
It depends. For me, it’s a delicate balance. Though I want to be held in the same regard and sort of seen in the same light as like-minded activists and artists who were cut from a certain cloth, I also want to lend dimension and range to what it is that I do. I don’t only want to be sort of pigeonholed into only making music that is “conscious” or that is informative in that way. Though very much of my body of work has spoken to the current state of the nation and of the world, and whatever sort of space I’m moving in at that point in time, there’s also an element that is just a homage to the foundation, or the principles of hip-hop and sort of that from which it came. There’s an element of that.
Some of the people that I work with, I work with because they inspire me and my career. Or there’s some parallels, there’s some common grain that we share as artists or in the creative process. There’s also people who, it just feels natural to work with, and I’ll work with those artists as well. Whoever I work with, I like for it to happen in an organic manner. I don’t really [like] contrived, sort of thrown-together relationships specifically for the sake of trying to figure out that hit record or whatever. I’m always able to sort of see right through it.
You would say you have that approach when it comes to dealing with brands as well, like in the footwear and the fashion space?
I do. I try to. Again, it boils down to that delicate balance. We have families to feed. So, I’m definitely looking for the work. There’s very much to be taken into consideration when we’re thinking about the partnership with a brand, or a collaboration between The Roots brand or Black Thought brand and someone else. Yeah, it’s important. What their agenda is, what it has been, what it’s become, what’s the purpose of whatever it is that’s being done. It’s all important to me.
For sure. I want to end things on a little bit of a lighter note. Could we expect a Black Thought x Reebok sneaker? What would that look like if there was one?
I’m not sure what it would look like. You could expect it. Who’s to say? Never say never. I’d be open to working with Reebok in that way. Again, in an organic manner. It’s got to be the right shoe and for the right reason.
I’ve got one more for you, an of-the-moment question. How much of a problem do you think The Roots would be in a Verzuz battle, and do you have any ideal opponent?
I don’t know, man. I don’t think there’s any ideal opponent for The Roots. I think we covered so much ground, just creatively and musically. There’s just elements of everything that exist in The Roots. So, it’s weird. I don’t know. I can’t really see ourselves doing a Verzuz against any artists of the day, or even from our graduating class [and] on. It’s just super specific what it is that we do.
As far as being a problem, I think yes, we will be a problem in any competition, any sort of sound clash, be it Verzuz or whatever you want to call it. I think the musicians in The Roots are pretty much at the top of their field, like Questlove. From Questlove to Ray Angry, James Poyser, Kirk Douglas, Mark Kelley, Stro Elliot, everybody. These are all the best guys at what they do. I’m also one of the best, a top-tier artist for what it is that I do. No matter what you call the competition or any sort of a battle of the bands, that has something to do with The Roots, we would be problematic.