Denver's alternative weekly Westwood published an interview with Questlove a while back, but it's new to me. The article's got substance. Questlove riffs about hip-hop's status and its opportunities wasted and found; Erykah Badu's audience-defying new album; the inevitable tension between the Roots and whoever their label is; the decline of the record industry; and Questlove's own work at resuscitating the careers of soul icons Al Green and Tom Jones (huh?). Along the way, Questlove comments on music journalism and offers kudos to Christgau:

I think Robert Christgau is the last record reviewer on earth who listens to eight records a day twice before giving his opinion on it... Christgau is the last true-blue record critic on earth. He gave us an A-plus [for the Roots' latest album, Rising Down]. That's pretty much who I make my records for. He's like the last of that whole Lester Bangs generation of record reviewers, and I still heed his words. He gets my vision, and I'm cool with that. But half these people, they read Pitchfork, and they base half their opinion and quotes on that.

If Greg Tate had written up the interview, he would have transmogrified Questlove's magnanimous dialogue and immortalized it in one electric, magnificent essay, which is how Christgau's Voice reported on music back in the day.

Although, I'm not sure if Tate would have pointed out that Questlove didn't need to slam all contemporary music critics. Sasha Frere-Jones is one active critic whose music writing picks up from where Christgau, Tate, Bangs, Greil Marcus, Ellen Willis, et al. leave off. Seek out Frere-Jones. (In addition to everything else, he's got good things to say about the Roots.)


UPDATE, Thursday, August 21, 2008: What's that? You don't know Greg Tate? Man, he wrote about music for the Voice in the 80s. And here's how he describes it (License to ill: Black journalism in the pages of the 'Voice' [18-Oct-05], online at villagevoice.com):

The nature of the Voice easily made that radical pipe dream of a career plan a reality. I can't think of anywhere else my impudent ass would have been able to do the history of Harlem one week, George Clinton and hermeneutics the next, or routinely be encouraged to dispense my arcane opinions on Bootsy Collins, King Sunny Ade, Cecil Taylor, and the Bad Brains, or be given major space to theorize on the trial of eight Black revolutionaries whose sympathies lay with members of the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground.

This doesn't even begin to talk about the utterly outrageous liberties I got to take with the English language high and low here because, as was explained to me – by that amazing staff of editors who midwifed and made the paper sing in the '80s: Christgau, M. Mark, Kit Rachlis, Vince Aletti, Ross Wetzsteon, et. al – the Voice was a writer's paper, where editors were encouraged to help you say what you wanted to say in the way you wanted to say it and stay vaguely consistent with the style manual.

Greg "Ironman" Tate – See this essay by Michael Gonzales for a first-hand report on the repercussions of Tate's writing (and how Christgau helped set it in motion): A love from outer space: Why Greg Tate matters (25-Oct-07, online at blackadelicpop.blogspot.com).

Music writing in the Voice in the 70s and 80s: What the Velvet Underground did for those who heard them live in the 60s, the Voice did for readers who – during the 70s and 80s – ate up each week's issue.