Trotter, who once called himself ‘‘the invisible enigma,’’ has always been
reluctant to speak about his past. He was born in Philadelphia, in 1971, less
than two years before and a hundred miles away from hip-hop’s birth in
the Bronx. His family belonged to the Nation of Islam, and he came of age
during the years when crack cocaine ravaged American streets. He was 13
when, in 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department dropped an improvised
bomb on the Black-liberation group MOVE, destroying 61 houses and kill-
ing 11 people. For Trotter, the bombing had the same eff ect that the Rodney
King beating had on those who came of age during the 1990s, giving him a
sudden awareness of anti-Black violence. He remembers how he ‘‘felt the
gravitational pull of the propaganda,’’ recognizing a current in the media
that suggested the bombing was justifi ed. ‘‘It felt way too one-sided to be
believable,’’ he said. ‘‘Like these were people who looked like people I knew.’’
Amid a backdrop of a tragedy — his father, Thomas Trotter, was mur-
dered when Trotter was 2 — Trotter came up in a house of music. His
mother, Cassandra, would buy those best-of-the-decade collections of
’60s and ’70s music and ensconced Trotter in a home full of James Brown,
Marvin Gaye, Earth Wind & Fire. And, of course, the sounds of Philly —
from Hall & Oates to Patti LaBelle — permeated his childhood. When
they moved to South Philly and were closer to his grandmother, he got
nothing but gospel in her house. Years later, his grandmother would get
a healthy dose of the Roots: ‘‘For a long time she’d be right there — side
of the rear of the stage in a chair.’’
He was infl uenced by a song called ‘‘The Micstro,’’ a 1980 jam that
featured the M.C. RC LaRock rhyming for almost 10 minutes without
cease. And once Run-DMC came out, rocking sweats with fedoras and
leather jackets, looking like people from his block, the young Trotter was
hooked. By age 9, he had already given himself a rap moniker: Double T.
He and a fellow Philadelphia native and classmate, Dwight Grant, formed
the Crash Crew for an elementary school talent show; Grant went on to
become the platinum-selling M.C. Beanie Sigel. It’s a bit like imagining
the future N.B.A. Hall of Famers LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony
playing on the same youth basketball team, honing their craft together.
At the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, Trotter
met Ahmir Thompson, later known as Questlove, a fellow student whose
Casio keyboard turned him into a roving beat maker with whom Trotter
would found the hip-hop band the Roots.
Those were tough years for Trotter. When he was a junior in high school,
his mother was murdered. For some things, there is no solace, and I asked
if he’d ever confronted the failure of art to do the thing you wanted it to
do. ‘‘That’s one way to look at it,’’ he told me. ‘‘Another way to look at is
everybody I know, damn near all the people I grew up with, they all dead,
they all in jail. For me, art has been my saving grace, that’s my salvation.’’
It’s not only that music has taken him around the world and been the
foundation of so many of his longest friendships, but that it has been the
lifeline for a man that knows full well what could have been. As Trotter’sThe New York Times Magazine 27BBellow:Thhe rapppper TaTaariq Trrotter eeeescappedthee orbbitt of viooolencee thatclccaimeed fammmily and friends in
hissnative PPPhiladdellphiaaa. Opeening ppppagess: Trotttter onnsstage aaat thee PPershhhing Sqquare Signature Theater.