Black Thought has addressed how The Notorious B.I.G. truly felt when he saw The Roots’ classic “What They Do” visual.
In a clip from a recent episode of People’s Party With Talib Kweli — which was filmed at The Roots Picnic — The Roots frontman cleared the air about the longstanding issue of whether or not the Philadelphia group was dissing gangsta rap at the time. The topic was brought up by N.O.R.E. during a September 2022 episode of Drink Champs which featured Black Star (Kweli and Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def) and Dave Chappelle.
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“Nah, we weren’t dissing. First of all, I mean gangsta rap, what is that?” Black Thought questioned. “Capone-N-Noreaga, I wouldn’t consider that gangsta rap. But everything that was taking place during that point in time in music had become so predictable. We did that song and then ultimately the video just as a satire.”
He continued: “It was something that was meant to be received as comedy. But if you happened to be one of the cats who did all the shit people said we always be doing, then you probably felt a way.
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“We absolutely didn’t intend for anybody to take offense, but there was one scene in that video where the director dropped me into a duplicate of a scene from somebody else’s video and it was a B.I.G. joint.”
“So B.I.G., he really was offended by ‘What They Do,’ like by the video. He was rocking with the song, and then he saw the video and was devastated because he was a huge Roots fan. ‘Silent Treatment’ was his shit.
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“When I met B.I.G., he busted out [and] started singing ‘Silent Treatment.’ Junior M.A.F.I.A., Lil Kim, anybody that was B.I.G. adjacent or associated always was really supportive of The Roots. So when that joint came out, he was hurt. He felt like we was sort of dissing him after we bigged him up.
“That was one of the things that sorta came from that whole ‘What They Do,’ and it was wild because we were living in London by the time it came out, so we never got a chance to resolve the issue — at least not face to face.”
Check out the clip below:
The 1996 video was filled with themes that were (and still are) prevalent in Hip Hop music at that time, including bikini-clad women, luxury cars, and champagne indulgence.
Meanwhile in May, both Black Thought and Eminem were at the center of a fan debate on who the better rapper is between the two.
It all started when Beats, Rhymes, & List posted a picture of the two artists on Twitter previously and asked: “Who’s the stronger lyricist? Eminem vs Black Thought.”
As expected, the tweet spawned thousands of replies. “Black Thought easily, Em is great storyteller but in terms of technical power it’s really not close,” one fan tweeted.
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“Em. Black Thought is Dope, but his rhyme schemes are not as unique as Em’s,” another fan tweeted. “His work on the Roots albums were good, but some of it wasn’t that complex. Em has better storytelling tracks and more double entendres.”
Although the tweet spawned thousands of replies, both men are extremely successful in the music business and have decades of experience in the rap game.
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While Eminem started out as a battle rapper in 1990s and as a founding member of D12, Black Thought (real name Tariq Trotter) started out as the lead MC of the legendary Philadelphia group The Roots in the late 1980s.
Slim Shady has released 11 studio albums, and has won 15 Grammy Awards over the course of his career. Tariq Trotter has dropped three studio albums, and won three Grammy Awards. The majority of his album work has came under The Roots.
