There are countless gems in Questlove’s 2013 memoir Mo’ Meta Blues, but few shine brighter than the fact that the Roots drummer/producer writes his own internal reviews for each and every Roots album before the critics do.
As he says: “I write the review I think the album will receive and lay out the page, just like it’s a Rolling Stone page from when I was 10 or 11.”
Like a lot of the best things in life, this endeavor is part function, part fancy. While being a bonafide music media nut is probably at least 50% of the reason Questlove writes his own album reviews, he’s maintained that the practice also has a meaningful role in the creative process. As Jason Hess wrote in Kenyon Review following the release of Questlove’s Creative Quest in 2018: “He does this for every Roots album before he begins work on it. Seemingly a self-absorbed act of sabotage, he says that it helps him better visualize how the finished record should sound.”
Perhaps it’s a bridge too far, or maybe it’s right in line with Quest’s ambitious creative process, for the same concept to be applied to one’s professional life in general. To take stock of current accomplishments, as well as the next year, two years, or five years of ideal progress, and write it out like your own personal review. To treat the next period of your life like the writing of a book, and as Questlove says, “imagine the blurbs that will be on the paperback.”
I can’t adequately describe my discomfort at the idea of sitting down and writing the blurbs of my career paperback. Not just a string of wishlist or to-do items, but full-on, third-person descriptions of myself, like Quest does for the Roots—the impact I made, how I made people feel. Maybe I’m worried about sounding crass or vain, or maybe I just don’t know what I want to be yet.
The whole thing sounds like pure egomania. Kanye-level egomania. It’s fitting that I’m writing this on the release day of Ye’s latest sonic brain dump, Donda. But this isn’t Kanye Twitter bluster (Quest knows a little bit about that too), it’s a private act not meant for public consumption. Maybe after writing this post, and a couple others after that, I’ll finally write out where I want to be. The “paperback blurbs” of how I want to be described, how my record should sound.
And then, in the years that follow, do my best to live up to the hype. Quest always does.