Black Thought Announces Dopamine, A Supergroup With Elvis Costello, DJ Premier, T-Bone Burnett, Nathaniel Rateliff, & Cassandra Wilson
That neurotransmitter you’re feeling is the activation of a new supergroup bridging the worlds of rap, rock, jazz, folk, and more. As Brooklyn Vegan points out, in an interview with The Crate 808 Hip Hop Podcast, lead Roots rapper Black Thought revealed the existence of Dopamine, a new project involving Elvis Costello, who once recorded a whole album with the Roots. Also on board are legendary hip-hop producer DJ Premier, Americana overlord T-Bone Burnett, roots rocker (not Roots rocker) Nathaniel Rateliff, and jazz icon Cassandra Wilson.
Regarding the sounds generated by this unlikely list of collaborators, Black Thought explained, “A really unusual sort of motley crew…it’s weird how the songs come to be. Essentially live instrumentation, Premier is right there and he sorta takes it and chops it up.” There’s no word on when we might hear this music, but Thought intimated that Dopamine is one of the projects we’ll be hearing from sooner rather than later.
In addition to a new Roots album and his long-gestating project with Danger Mouse, Black Thought says he and Premier have a whole set of music he intends to release as part of his Streams Of Thought series — and that “for the past year and some change” he’s been accumulating an album’s worth of tracks with Q-Tips. Interesting stuff! Though as anyone who read our We’ve Got A File On You interview knows, Black Thought is always up to interesting stuff. Check out the podcast interview below.