Happy New Year From The Questlove Show
In this mini episode, Questlove discusses the song that captures his 2025—and it was released this year. He also talks about how he's spending the new year, including shows with The Roots. This brief check-in also updates the public on the status of the long-awaited album from the band, which... just listen. Happy new year from the team at the Questlove Show.
P.S.: Don't forget to send questions to our DM or through our contact forms at QuestloveSupreme.com for answers on upcoming mini episodes.
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Speaker 1: Quest Left Show is a production of iHeartRadio. In twenty twenty six, I'm gonna do something that I never do. Actually, I started this exercise maybe six years ago. Of course, you know you're supposed to have a resolution. I'll say around two thousand and twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, I would write list out. Right now, I'm just in the daily practice of twenty four hours at a time, so this will probably be the first year in which I don't write a list out. But literally one of the things that I'm known for is just writing lists. I will say that the message of getting through and we shouldn't have to give through a year. We should be thriving, and I think the only way to get to that is literally kind of do the things that we I roll about, and that includes things like season the day, you know, and yeah, there's some days where I wake up and I don't feel like doing affirmations or getting out of bed, or I'm in a foul mood and whatnot. But that's how I got through twenty twenty five. And here's the weird thing. I kind of had a great twenty twenty five despite the times that we've lived in and you know, a lot of tragedy has happened this year, but you have to rigorously just fight for a sense of peace and a sense of joy. And that's the only advice I can give you, is you have to do this one day at a time, waking up and saying that this is going to be you know, every day I wake up today is going to be the best January blah blah blah blah blah of twenty twenty six, or whatever date it is. That's my advice to you guys. So in the pandemic in which I really got very serious about, like therapy, whatnot, one particular year, I think in twenty twenty one, right when we were about to release the movie Summer of Soul and whatnot, my therapist decided to try a new exercise with me and made me list the one hundred things that I fear the most, or the one things that I don't like, or the one hundred things that I am not cool with. And somehow Jedi mind tricked me into kind of jumping in head first, not knowing what's down there waiting for me piranha or trampoline or whatever. And I got through that list of one hundred by like August, and there's something that happens to you when all the things that you previously feared is behind you like this. This is almost like an invincible feeling. The thing is a Jeff Bridges movie. Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez were in a movie in which I think he avoided an accident or he survived a plane crash, whatever, and then suddenly he became like a super daredevil like he had he was looking for stuff to scare him and he couldn't find it. And so that's kind of like what I've been on in the last five years of this very puzzling decade. Yeah, New Year's Eve. The roots are in Los Angeles at Disney Hall. As promised, we are more than past the halfway point of the new album as far as mixing and creative and all those things to kind of speak now forever hold your piece stage of the record. So I pretty much plan on spending at least the first four months of January, besides getting older, really just delving into whatever maintenance clean up I have to do for endgame so that it's ready to go in hands. Like we're already planning like a major tour behind this record every day. My managers like, so we're going to have a record, right, because you know, like we plan this tour based on an album coming out, right, Yeah, you're going to have it. Yeah, So the album will be out now that I've finished earth Wind and Fire. The next project I'm about to do, which is a Mimith project, meaning it's going to be my first documentary, that's also going to be a multi episode, a four parter if you will. The only thing is that my producer shout out to the great Alyssa Payne, who hopefully is on the road to her first oscar. I highly recommend you watching the Netflix documentary called The Perfect Neighbor. She's the producer of that documentary. She is kind of right now doing the shuffle that I was doing back in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one to get my oscar. And when she is done with that, then she will join me to start the dismantling or the putting together of this new project that I have coming. So that said, I have five months in which I have nothing to do but work on the roots. So this is where you all want me to be, right, You want me to just work on the Roots and the Roots only, so there's no distractions from any project. It's Roots time. What song best describes twenty twenty five. You know, it's weird. It hants me so much, man. But I wasn't ready emotionally or otherwise for the closing song on They Lost Soul's Cabin in the Sky. So just hearing how Dave closes that album and how they closed that album, for those that are like, hey, you problems, You're going to turn that roots album in in November, you didn't do it? Why I heard that and I was like, oh God, I don't have no song on this record that makes me want to just sit and cry or whatever. And I'm not saying that. It's actually probably the most non emotional roots album ever. I mean, this is the closest that I believe that Treeka and I have gotten to capturing the spirit of the first five records, mainly because one, you know, a major component of roots albums, Richard Nichols isn't here right now. So I will say that the last album in which I'm not framing it like the Lion's Share of the work, but the last album that I really truly like micromanaged as in I got this, I got this, What's things fall Apart? You know, because also when you're in a group, I know, democracy is kind of a suggestible like illusion, and that theme is explored a lot in the Earthwind and Fire. Doc Philip Bailey makes it absolutely known that democracy in a group is not real at all. There's always one leader who says it and everyone else follows and you just cosplay like your group. But you know, for the greater good of us being here for thirty five years, you have to give agency and leeway, you know, for people's ideas. So you know, I kind of haven't really controlled a roots out in other words, like, yeah, I don't agree with this thing, you know, but I lost the vote, so it happens. So I will say that this is probably the album that will be the closest to you know, Ihladelph Half Life and Things Fall Apart, where somehow I a lot of my ideas made it to the fertilization, you know. So yeah, y'all. Also, yeah, in general, let me know, hit me with the song that best described you're twenty twenty five, Mine, of course was Don't Push Me by day La Soul. Yeah, don't push Me because I'm close to the edge. Try not to lose my head. How apropos, But yeah, follow QLs and share and the comments and well we'll discuss those. Thank you.
