Tariq Trotter

Grammy- award winning, co-founder of The Roots and MC, better known as Black Thought, pens an insightful, fiery, and soulful memoir. Opening up with setting fire to his childhood home, Trotter recounts the struggles and the victories that came with growing up in Philadelphia in the 70s and 80s. From selling crack to becoming a graffiti artist to embracing rap and hip hop; art became the savior and the lifeline that he embraced. The Upcycled Self is broken into four relationships that made him the man he is today; community, friends, art, and family. Each relationship is expanded with vignettes from his childhood some humorous, many heartbreaking and emotional. Poetic and masterfully written, this memoir is narrated by Black Thought himself, which makes the audiobook even more powerful and passionate. This will resonate with hip hop lovers, Roots fans, and those who love a good memoir. The only negative is the short length, readers will want more!… (lisätietoja)

Tariq Trotter, who is better known by his professional name “Black Thought”, is one of the most prolific and respected voices in the Black community, having co-founded the influential and multi-Grammy Award winning hip hop group The Roots, along with Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, and becoming a critically acclaimed stage and screen actor and playwright. In The Upcycled Self Trotter recounts his upbringing in Philadelphia in the 1970s and 1980s, and how it shaped and inspired his journey from a troubled childhood filled with personal loss, failure and grief to a deeply fulfilling and wildly successful life.

Trotter defines the “upcycled self” as a process of examination, in which we critically but dispassionately evaluate those who most affected us, the choices we have made, and the situations we have found ourselves in, in order to create a new self composed of the best traits we possess, surrounded by people who nourish and inspire us, and satisfied with our goals and accomplishments:

What if we chased the threads running through the quilted patterns of our lives and pulled them. What if we trusted that tugging at them wouldn’t make us less, wouldn’t ruin the tapestry. What if we totally let them come apart at the seams, undid the stitches of ourselves that no longer served us, forgave them, and wove new legacies of old scraps, like Gee’s Bend quilters creating intricate arrays steeped in our own history.

What if we trusted the upcycle?

"The Upcycled Self" is divided into three parts. In ‘Who Are Your People’ Trotter tells us how his mother identified his love of art and encouraged him to pursue his passion, despite her own personal failures, which was further nurtured by his family, teachers and friends, most notably Questlove, who was a fellow student at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. ‘Where Are You From’ describes the neighborhoods he grew up in, mainly in South Philadelphia, which provided their own lessons on how to survive, especially during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, but also gave him a sense of identity and belonging. ‘What Is Your Art’ recounts his path of self expression, from a graffiti artist to a musician and ultimately a hip hop legend, and how his creative mind became transformed and fulfilled along the way.

"The Upcycled Self" can be read not only as a memoir, but also as an inspirational guide toward personal betterment, and how we as adults can positively influence young people to resist negative impulses and influences and pursue their own path to success. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I will pay much more attention to Trotter’s art and its messages.… (lisätietoja)