(AllHipHop News) Comedian Chris Rock and The Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson are doing the media rounds to promote the upcoming Rock-directed, Quest-scored movie Top Five. The pair appeared on Juan Epstein and a few interesting topics from Hip Hop history came up.
[ALSO READ: Def Jam To Release “Top Five” Soundtrack Featuring Tracks By Jay Z, Kanye West, DMX & More]
Quest reflected back on the issues between The Notorious B.I.G. and The Roots. Before Biggie’s death, the Philadelphia band released the video “What They Do” which some viewers saw as a dig at the Bad Boy emcee. Quest stated that Big was initially a big fan of The Roots, but the video changed the NYC native’s view of the group.
“Biggie was like our biggest champion… he put Brooklyn onto The Roots,'” said Questlove. “We told the [“What They Do”] director we didn’t want to do a direct reference to someone’s video. We’re just talking about the impending, lurking of this new, at the time what seemed like this new Apartheid – the have nots versus the haves.”
According to Quest, the group did not know the visuals were a direct reference to Biggie’s “One More Chance” video during filming. It was not until seeing the final cut of the video that The Roots realized the association. Biggie later sent shots at The Roots in an interview with The Source, but unfortunately Quest was not able to settle their problems before Biggie was killed.
[ALSO READ: Questlove Discusses “Stop & Frisk”, Hip Hop’s Forefathers, & Biggie Being Upset At The Roots]
Juan Ep’s other guest, Chris Rock, discussed his longstanding connection to Hip Hop as well. The legendary comic spoke on his cult classic CB4 and his contribution to Kanye West’s “Blame Game” off My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
“Greatest Hip Hop album of all time,” declared Rock about Ye’s 2010 LP. “Kanye West is a genius… I want to say I was in the booth for about two hours… He was just throwing s**t at me, ‘try this, try that’… He snapped it all together.”
Rock believes Twisted Fantasy is better than other classic albums like Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Prince’s Purple Rain. He calls Kanye’s project “the best album of the last 50 years.”
[ALSO READ: Kanye West’s “Heartless” Was Almost On Jay Z’s “The Blueprint 3″? No I.D. Answers]
Watch Questlove and Chris Rock’s interview below.
