Posted by Black Thought addressed his reputation as an “underrated” MC while speaking to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in a recent interview.
The Roots’ de facto leader has released numerous solo efforts, including the Streams of Thought series, as well as 13 albums with the Philly group, showing off his innate rhyming prowess on every single one. Still, he’s sometimes left out of the G.O.A.T. discussion.
“I think over the years I’ve definitely felt like, yeah. I mean, people, everyone says that,” “Everyone I meet, ‘You’re so underrated. You’re so underrated.’ Or in interviews, it’s, ‘How do you feel to be so underrated?’ But yeah, I don’t know. The people whose opinions matter to me have always properly rated me, so it’s never really been a huge deal for me.”
And rightfully so. Black Thought and Danger Mouse just released their new collaborative project Cheat Codes, which HipHopDX determined is the best album of the year (so far). As always, Black Thought was rhyming at an elite level, while the DANGERDOOM producer delivered a bed of stellar production for Thought to ride.
In an interview with DX, the duo discussed how they wound up with A$AP Rocky, Russ, the late MF DOOM, Run The Jewels, Raekwon, Joey Bada$$ and more on the album.
“The songs dictate what cadence, what style of flow and what vocal quality is going to be befitting,” Thought said. “Everybody can’t get on every record. So when you do a record in this space for someone else to hop on it, you definitely have in mind who you want to hear.
Black Thought Says Danger Mouse Has Heard The Roots’ Long-Awaited New Album
“There aren’t that many people you’re able to hear filling that slot, if that makes any sense. So there’s only ever one or two, maybe three people that we even consider to feature on a specific record that there was an opening on, so it’s almost as if each of these songs that have features were pretty much created with, if not the specific person, close to it in mind.”
Black Thought also provided an update on the long-awaited follow-up to The Roots’ 2014 album …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin, saying: “The Roots album could be done whenever we need it to be. We got enough songs, and I feel like it’s cohesive. It’s not like a, ‘We’re about to start,’ so it boils down to just that refinement, which songs are actually completed. We have hundreds of compositions, a couple hundred ideas, because it’s been a minute.”