The Roots live, in 1999.
A Philly jam session with the Roots crew helped bring performing musicians into the fold.
Hip-hop officially turned 50 this year. And since its entire history is a book’s worth, I’ll just talk about what hip-hop did for live music, based on my own experience.
Though not many people know it nowadays, some of the finest and most important moments in hip-hop history actually occurred in Philadelphia during the turn of this century, at a jam session called the Black Lily. I was there, so take my word for it: None of us realized how important this would become in the future, or what it would do to transform live hip-hop. Photo by Mika Väisänen
When it comes to music and culture—and certainly Black American music and culture—it’s exceedingly difficult/near impossible to say when a particular sound “began.” New sounds and genres emerge organically over time; there is always something that came before, which transforms into the next thing. The idea that one person started this or that sound is usually inaccurate. Still, the Black Lily began in the late ’90s when the Roots, up-and-comers at the time and under the guidance of their manager, Richard Nichols, decided to begin a movement. What they started actually had as much to do with the Sun Ra model, as it did with anything hip-hop related.
The Black Lily was built upon a long tradition of Philly jam sessions. But the thing that made it different from the outset was that it was actually made for and run by women artists. Tracey Moore and Mercedes Martinez, collectively known as the Jazzyfatnastees, grew sick and tired of having to fight to get on stage at jam sessions, so they pitched the idea to Rich to create their own.
This live hip-hop jam session began in Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s basement. At the time, nobody could afford to rent a venue, and the basement gave us a chance to see what this could be. Within a week or two, the event had grown so rapidly that Ahmir and his neighbors were complaining about how many people were attending, and the event moved to the Five Spot, a two-story nightclub in the Old City neighborhood.
At this time, live hip-hop was not common, or something that emcees even wanted to be involved in. Producers like DJ Premier were sampling classics by artists such as Nina Simone, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Thelonoius Monk, and this eventually paved the way for the crazy idea to have a live drummer playing behind an emcee instead of a DJ.
At the same time, hip-hop production had changed out of necessity, so it was now almost impossible to hear which songs a particular producer sampled to create a track. However, this still didn’t prevent publishers from trying to take everything on the few occasions where they figured it out. As a result, producers began to use less samples and more live musicians, who could sound like samples, which brought bands like the Roots, the Fugees, and the Black Eyed Peas (the first incarnation) into the light. All of this laid a foundation for live-music events like the Black Lily to come into existence.
The Black Lily soon became one of the main weekly scene-building events in Philly, and musicians on all kinds of instruments started playing to hip-hop audiences, with an authentic hip-hop sensibility. Every Tuesday beginning at 9 p.m. for around eight years, this event redefined the idea of a hip-hop show. Picture an audience of 250 hip-hop heads watching emcees and vocalists trade on stage with live drums, bass, guitar, Fender Rhodes, a tuba, maybe a vibraphone—all in the pocket, sounding like something that J Dilla just whipped up. If that wasn’t enough, Jill Scott, Common, or Amy Winehouse might also jump up. There was never a dull moment, and none of what took place was planned. People just got on stage and did their thing. And this would often happen while the Roots were on the other side of the world spreading the gospel of live hip-hop by dominating some stage in Paris.
Eventually, having 10 to 15 audience members flying in from Paris, Tokyo, or Rome on a Tuesday just to experience this event became the norm. More than 40 artists, who later went on to sign major record deals, were first discovered at the Black Lily. Lots of musicians, who are now musical directors for the biggest names out here, got their start at the Black Lily. Most importantly, entire approaches to playing hip-hop with a live band were refined there.
Like jazz, hip-hop is actually a massive universe, covering everything from Black dance to literature. There were so many regions and people involved over the years, but for me, the Black Lily was a special and transformative period within the history of hip-hop that everybody should learn about.
"Captain" Kirk Douglas: From "Wheels on the Bus" to the Tonight Show
Roots guitarist “Captain” Kirk Douglas talks about his background as a pre-school teacher, the role of the guitar in hip-hop, and gives the definitive take on his Prince story.
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A Day in the Life on The Tonight Show
Generally speaking, we’ll get there at 2:00 PM and that has us around for whatever random things may come up. We also do testing to maintain a level of everybody knowing where everybody's at with Covid and so forth. And then we will go out about 4:45 to do a warmup for the audience, and we'll do a song for the audience. Or there's a guy that comes out and warms up the crowds, Seth Herzog. The show begins at 5:00 and we're usually out of there by 6:15. I’m no spring chicken, I have kids, I have two teenagers, I'm married, and my time prior to the show is generally geared towards health and wellness and doing a good performance.
So, I'll wake up and try to get my daughter out of bed so she can get ready for school. And then I'll exercise because I am becoming a vintage instrument and our bodies are our instruments, so I try to take care of myself to that end. I live right next to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, so that gives me little excuse as far as exercising. But yeah, a doctor friend told me that aging is a contact sport and like any sport you have to train for it.
Leonard “Hub” Hubbard was the founding bassist of the Roots, playing in the group from 1992 to 2007. He lost a long battle with cancer in December 2021.
As a member of the Roots, Leonard “Hub” Hubbard created a vocabulary for live hip-hop.
What’s in a name? How do names define us and the lives we live? Within my culture, everybody has both a given and “chosen name.” A hub is literally the central part of a wheel, but symbolically it’s that thing around which all motion happens. Hub, aka Leonard Hubbard, was the original bassist in the Roots, and one could argue that if hip-hop had a hub, it would be bass. Sadly, Hub lost his long battle with cancer in December 2021.
I first met Hub when the then-unknown, Philadelphia-based band randomly moved to London in the early ’90s. It turned out this move was a strategy suggested by jazz alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. “Move them to Europe and push them as a jazz act,” he is rumored to have told the band’s manager, the late great Richard Nichols. And so he did.
In those days, hip-hop (distinct from rap music) was a thing, but live hip-hop was certainly not. The creation of hip-hop was very much wrapped up in some unfortunate, shortsighted political decisions that affected U.S. inner-city high school education. This led to the removal of music and art programs from those schools, which many of hip-hop’s architects attended. Access to musical instruments became all the more rare, interrupting an important thread that stretched back to a period somewhere between the abolition of slavery and Louis Armstrong picking up a horn. That arrested development continues to this day.
The HuB (The Roots)
Hub goes solo with his Fender Jazz Bass, demonstrating a commitment to groove and melody as well as a raw and uncompromising percussive technique.
By the time the Roots came along, this thread/tradition that ran through all African American music had been almost completely severed. Fifteen years earlier, a mostly instrument-less generation created hip-hop out of their deep need to be heard and express themselves, eventually turning to alternative methods: rapping, turntables, scratching, breakbeats, drum machines, and, eventually, samplers. So, in some ways late-’80s/early-’90s hip-hop stood apart from—though it was still most definitely related to—what came before. Thus, drummers and bassists within hip-hop were an anomaly. In fact, hip-hop was actually a large part of the reason why they were out of work!
Later on, live hip-hop bands such as the Roots had to come up with a “new” language and approach that worked for instruments, while still retaining all the things that people loved about this music: the groove, graininess, and nostalgia of old funk breaks; the history, musical complexities, and sophistication of jazz samples; the low-end-heavy head-knocking grooves and rhythmic precision from drum machines; and, of course, the emcee’s lyrics and rhymes, which gave it all meaning.
The thought of a bass player being able to mimic 808 bass drums tuned completely down with decay all the way out was equally bizarre. However, the Roots achieved these and so many other sounds essential to hip-hop.
Rich Nichols played an architectural role in sculpting the Roots’ sound on record, but onstage this was the domain of the musicians—in particular, drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, keyboardist Scott Storch, and bassist Leonard “Hub” Hubbard. Before they came along, it could be argued that the instructions on how to really play hip-hop live didn’t exist. The thought of a ’90s drummer being able to sound like 7 seconds of looped Clyde Stubblefield from the ’70s on vinyl was bizarre. The thought of a bass player being able to mimic 808 bass drums tuned completely down with decay all the way out was equally bizarre. However, the Roots achieved these and so many other sounds essential to hip-hop.
Anybody fortunate enough to encounter a Roots show between 1992 and 2012 knew without a doubt that they had mastered hip-hop! They became as comfortable with recreating classic sounds/breaks from the ’50s, ’60s, ’and 70s as they were with creating their own iconic ’90s/’00s (and beyond) sound. The Roots eventually became the go-to “backing band” for almost every major live hip-hop show, beginning with their Okayplayer tours and maturing over the course of 10 years of Roots Picnics. Today, they push their skill for metamorphosis even further into the realms of rock, pop, country, and whatever else nightly on The Tonight Show.
For being a part of what made this all possible, Hub—the don of the black hoodie and chew stick—deserves an honorable mention and some credit. Hub’s approach to playing his ’90s blonde Fender Jazz (with the white pickguard) or completely battered upright was pretty different from what came before. It had to be.
Intro / There's Something Goin' On
Take a listen to the Do You Want More?!!!??! album, for example. Respect of Groove! When he wasn’t taking extended mid-set, PA-system-destroying bass solos, Hub never tried to be the most attention-grabbing or out-front bassist, like maybe Jaco in Weather Report. But what he did endeavor to do, as the wise Reggie Washington would say, is “keep the bottom.”
He succeeded. Who knows … maybe Fender will create a signature Hub model?