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People's Party with Talib Kweli

Tom Morello Talks Blackness, Rage Against The Machine, Merging Rap and Rock, Wu-Tang, and ODB

People's Party with Talib Kweli

UPROXX

Music

4.42.1K Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2021

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stop what you’re doing. If you ever wanted to hear an interview with one of the greatest guitarists ever to live; if you ever wanted to share an hour learning about the guitarist’s guitarist—a man who is equally revered by Bruce Springsteen, Slash, and Chuck D—then you need to drop what you’re doing and turn your eardrums to this interview with Tom Morello. Over the course of 1.5 hours, Tom wrestles with his Blackness (and being perceived as white by rock fans), and getting famous for revolutionary music; unpacks his biggest hits; tells the story of his SNL ban, and so much more. The interview isn’t all about big subjects, though. There’s also lots of technique talk and plenty of laughs. Truly, if you’re down for one Tom Morello interview this year (and you should be, he’s amazing!), try this gem and tell us your thoughts!

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Peace and love party people. This is Talib Kuala Lee to BKMC, the MCEO.

0:03.8

You are about to hear an excerpt of People's Party hosted by me and my lovely and talented

0:08.0

co-host, Ms. Jasmine Lee. What up Jasmine? What up Peeps to hear our entire combo and all of our

0:12.8

episodes with stars from the game to Lil Kim, to Anthony Anderson, to my sister Tiffany Hattish,

0:18.5

subscribe to the Luminary channel on Apple Podcasts. I needed to see you and slash together.

0:23.5

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like as to like black guys in these groups. Yeah.

0:27.6

Yeah, because no one, no one very few people who are fans of either of our bands, Guns and Rosie,

0:32.1

like know that we're black, dude. That's very true. I know what I'm saying. Like the one thing that

0:36.0

I knew you were black, but I didn't know you were like born in Harlem pops,

0:39.3

you're in the Mow Mow's black. No, no, no, here's the thing. Is that black? Let me tell you this.

0:44.1

Let me tell you this. I'm not, not only am I black, but I'm weirdly black, because I have changed

0:50.2

colors during my life and career. I grew up in Libertyville, Illinois, where I was the only black

0:57.1

kids used to touch my hair. They marveled that the color of my palms was different than the color

1:02.4

of the back of my hands. There was, there was a noose in my family's garage when I was 13 years old.

1:07.8

I, that's not the only noose I saw as a, as a young person in, in the town. I was, my mom,

1:12.8

who was a white lady teaching in high school, had shit written on her blackboard that was what you

1:18.3

might expect. I was black as coal. Later on, I played in a popular rock and roll band that,

1:26.2

that had a lot of the markers of white rock and roll music. There were electric guitars.

1:31.5

The way that I speak is not typical of urban vernacular. And so then there's a lot of fans of

1:38.1

Rage Against the Machine and Audio Slave that when I often, which I often do in Twitter and

1:43.2

Instagram whatnot, refer to myself, my African American heritage, they're like, you're not black.

1:48.4

Right. You're not. No, Tomorow is not black.

...

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