Watch Black Thought Debut Three Songs In Tiny Desk Concert

Watch Black Thought Debut Three Songs In Tiny Desk Concert

For the past few weeks, The Tonight Show has moved to something that Jimmy Fallon films in his own apartment, and the members of Fallon’s house band the Roots have been getting into their own projects. ?uestlove, for instance, has been playing Instagram Live DJ sets at home. And now Black Thought has turned up on the taped-from-home version of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts series, debuting three brand-new songs.

Since 2018, Black Thought has been working on his Streams Of Thought EP series, teaming up with different producers for entire records: 9th Wonder on the first volume, Salaam Remi on the second. In his Tiny Desk Concert, Black Thought debuts two songs from the third volume, which he’s apparently recorded with producer Sean C, one of the members of the New York turntablist crew the X-Ecutioners and half of the production duo Sean C & LV. On “Nature Of The Beast,” the last song in the Tiny Desk video, Thought teams up with Portugal. The Man, who show up via remote video to sing the hook. But the real attraction here is the first song, “Thought Vs. Everybody,” which is just a blistering display of technical rapping. Thought looks so calm sitting there and ripping into this thing, with his Grammys precariously balanced on piles of books behind him. But the rapping is just mercilessly good.

Though says this Tiny Desk show is the first in a video series that he’ll be doing from home. And he takes the opportunity to debut a song from another venture of his: A song from Black No More, Thought’s new Off Broadway musical. Thought is co-writing the play with 12 Years A Slave screenwriter John Ridley, and he’ll also star in it. It’s an adaptation of a 1931 George S. Schuyler sci-fi novel, a sort of racial morality play about a Harlem Renaissance world where a scientist finds a way to eliminate the differences between races. On the song “Yellow,” Thought raps from the perspective of a black man who no longer wants to be black. The music is big-band jazz. It’s pretty interesting! Watch the whole video below.

Black No More is scheduled to debut in October at New York’s Pershing Square Signature Center.

more from News