Photo: courtesy of Penguin Random House
Questloveis sharing his love of time travel andhip-hopwith a young audience.
The book follows best friends Kasia and Rahim, two nerdy Black teenagers trying to navigate time travel, family and friendship inPhiladelphia, the author/filmmaker’s hometown.
Speaking with PEOPLE exclusively about his upcoming release, Questlove, 51, explains that what started as a pandemic project has grown to encompass a lot of his favorite things.
“During 2020, I had a lot of time on my hands to tackle bucket list things I wouldn’t have had time to otherwise. I had this burning desire, as a time travel obsessive myself, to knock this out,” he shares.
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courtesy of Penguin Random House
The book’s action sees Rahim and Kasia’s parents involved in the action as well. It was important to Questlove to speak to both parents and kids through those characters.
“For a lot of kids of color, when you weregrowing up in the city, it’s almost impossible to not be in a constant state of fight or flight,” he says, referencing his own experiences having to “learn survival rules” growing up in Philadelphia in the 1980s.
Questlove notes that as a result of these upbringings, “parents might have a tendency to be very strict, just in the name of survival, for safety’s sake.”
“When you’re living for safety, you’re basically living a 24-hour existence, like, ‘Okay, I made that 24 hours now. Next night? I made that one.’ And as a result, it really doesn’t leave much space for the idealized way that we see child-rearing in media. I wanted to have a kind of revision,” he says.
In the book, Rahim and his father butt heads over the younger’s love for his favorite hip-hop group, a situation Questlove recalls from his own childhood.
Courtesy of Penguin Random House
“As much as I grew up in a musical household, there was definitely a time when my dad and I would have constant squabbles about the music I was getting into once I was a teenager, once I started listening toPublic EnemyandLLand a lot of old school hip-hop,” he shares. “He was like, ‘ah, man you were so good when you were listening to John Coltrane.'”
Questlove hopes that through Rahim and his dad’s connection, he can “plant a seed for parents,” as well as readers.
“Because when you’re writing kids’ books, it’s not just the kids that are in the room. There’s also an adult in the room as well,” Questlove adds. “I really wanted it to set an example for communication, for finding commonality among the two, like the parents in the book realize how much they have in common with their kids.”
WithThe Rhythm of Time, Questlove hopes to instill some of the common themes he carries through music, filmmaking and his other creative endeavors.
Questlove.Kevin Mazur/Getty
“One is that creativity is key. I feel like creativity is the portal, the release and the world of magic that oftentimes kids — especially kids that look like me — really don’t have the luxury to indulge in,” he notes.
“I also want to instill confidence in people to reimagine things that we were taught and reverse them,” he continues. “Failure doesn’t mean that, ‘It’s over and move on to something else.’ Failures, I see them as a way to learn the lesson.”
“It wasn’t my intention to preach to the kids, but for me, this is the creative way that I can show people where my life is and also plant seeds in their lives as well,” he adds.
The Rhythm of Timehits bookshelves on April 18, 2023.
source: people.com
