For Danger Mouse and Black Thought, feel is more important than sound

Our guests in this session are generally regarded as some of the very best at what they do in their respective fields. First, there’s Tariq Trotter, aka Black Thought, a brilliant and incisive lyricist and orator, who along with Questlove, co-founded The Roots, one of the most revered hip-hop troupes in the genre’s storied history. And yes, you can catch them as the house band of The Tonight Show.

And then there’s Brian Burton, who you know as Danger Mouse, the wildly inventive producer who’s worked with U2, Adele, and The Black Keys, and had musical partnerships with CeeLo Green in Gnarls Barkley, and James Mercer of the Shins in Broken Bells.

Though Black Thought and Danger Mouse have known each other for a very long time, it took a while to complete their debut collaborative album, Cheat Codes. In this session, we’ll talk with the multiple Grammy winners about why feel was more important than sound, how they work together in studio, and they’ll talk about the brilliance of another legendary MC who makes a posthumous appearance on the album, MF Doom.