True story (but not really, for legal purposes). Years ago I was working as a club promoter and we had ?uestlove from
The Roots playing a DJ set. The band was in town for a festival and I was supposed to pick him up from his hotel after the show, drive him to the club and look after him for the evening. It should have been straight forward. It turned into a mind-crippling nightmare.
Sometime during the band’s festival performance a friend handed me what I thought was a 'jazz cigarette'. It wasn’t. It was more like that thing Denzel Washington makes Ethan Hawke smoke at gunpoint in
Training Day. This was bad because I still had to drive my car to the hotel, pick up ?uestlove and act like my entire brain wasn’t caving in. Still, I could deal with one DJ, right?
I arrived at the hotel to find the entire Roots entourage waiting for me – about 20 people. I had one car and a head full of bad vibes. Long story short, I managed not to kill The Roots, I got them to the club (somehow). Black Thought is the moodiest person you will ever meet in your life, the band are incredible live and Questlove is real nice behind the turntables.
Anyway, lies aside, this is their latest single 'How I Got Over'. It’s really quite good. The new album is due any day now.