Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson is unquestionably one of hip-hop’s most silent omnipotent forces. As the drummer and band leader of The Roots, his words hold weight in the hip-hop community. Now, in his upcoming memoir, Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According To Questlove, which he co-wrote with novelist and New Yorker editor, Ben Greenman, ?uestlove offers his thoughts and observations on life and music as well as some unfavorable thoughts on 2 Chainz.
According to the Village Voice, In the book, ?uestlove features footnoted commentary from The Roots’ manager, Rich Nichols. In one of his excerpts, Nichols discusses 2 Chainz’s 2012 album, Based On A T.R.U. Story, and calls the rapper’s music dumb.
“It’s a f**k*ng object lesson in thematic narrowness, one dumb*ss idea repeated over and over again,” Nichols says in Mo’ Meta Blues. “There’s a song called, ‘Crack’ and then a song called, ‘Dope Peddler,’ right next to each other. Then there’s one called, ‘I Luv Dem Strippers.’ I’m not knocking 2 Chainz but what kind of market elevates him at the expense of everything else?”
According to Nichols, it’s that same ideology about the supposed unbreakable link between black culture and criminal/hypersexual activity that made it imperative that ?uestlove wrote this memoir and offered a different take on what it means to be black and a part of hip-hop.
“Stories that revolve around Black people, the s**t has to be this weird sort of outlawish type of existence for people to get into it,” Nichols says. “For some reason, there’s this idea, post-Hip Hop, that black people’s lives are always on the edge.”
Who knows what will come of Nichols’ critique of 2 Chainz, but he’s certainly not the first to blast the rapper. Check out some other 2 Chainz critics below. – nicholas robinson
