The James Mtume Interview

Sonically Lazy 7/7 by Mtume ​I always looked at sampling like somebody making a quilt. The quilt is made up of many other blankets. You have to learn how to make your own blanket. ​I don’t down hip hop. I think it was a very creative thing, because for the young black kids, music was taken out of the schools. When was the last time anybody’s seen a music store in a black neighborhood? Maybe thirty years ago. You go to Harlem, and there are no music stores. It was the genius of desperation that brought about sampling. It also kept the DNA of Funk and RnB alive for kids who never really heard it. It’s gotten to the point now where a lot of the cats are playing with a band, and I find that terribly interesting. ​We have to go back to the period when hip hop was starting. There was a great social divide in the black community between the older blacks and younger blacks, especially black men. ​Many in my generation denigrated hip hop and rap. But each generation brings its own music. That divide gave a lot of anger to the hip hop artists, who felt they weren’t getting respect. If you have no youth and all old people, your glass is half empty. All youth with no age, your glass is half full. ​We have become sonically lazy. The only cat who ever broke out of the box was Sun Ra. The rest of us, I don’t care what avenue we take, we’re still in that box.