Questlove Reaches Into The Mailbag & Answers - March 7

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeart Radio. All right, y'all, this is letters to the Quest Love Show again. If you have any letters, slide into our dms. First of all, follow QLs on all the socials please and also subscribe and like on YouTube. That is the fuel to r fire. If you like these episodes and whatnot. Look it just takes a second. Please like it. Subscribe with trying to build a nation of inform music heads here. Yeah, thank you. I like doing this. Give me more questions.

00:00:37
Speaker 2: All right, this is a question from Charlie. Okay, question for Questlove. My musical Mount Rushmore is DiAngelo, Prince Stevie and Amy Winehouse. Life is a music fan has become exponentially less exciting as three of them have passed away, and I'm just a fan. I've had to accept that and I'll never have an experience like the first time I heard Voodoo ever again is somebody who obviously knew and collaborated with them. Have you had times when it feels like it's not worth it or the same without them? Thanks and sorry for being a downer.

00:01:11
Speaker 1: One by one. As the aforementioned three went to the next plane, I will say that I probably go through a month of sort of pondering what does this mean. What happens with me is when someone leaves, there's a pressure pointed to me, basically that now you're going to have to lead, And you know, it's weird. When Prince passed, I was on the phone with DiAngelo. He and I were talking for maybe maybe twenty minutes before the CNN like CNN happened to be on and we were talking, and I believe he asked me. He's like, yo, you get worried. Yet We've had a lot of discussions on Prince's reactions to his music, and it kind of maybe by the top of January twenty fifteen, when you know, Black Messiah's like not even a month old. He hit me up, Yo, you hear anything. So it was my job to test the waters and tell him. You know what our peers is saying, like, all right, what does she say about the record? What do you say about it? But you know, for me, I specifically, I'm sorry I would have laughed at this. I have to say the arrival of Black Messiah might have been I can speak on it now, might have been a little bit too much for Prince at the time in his life. Look, haven't seen it, and I know I'll never not humble brag or being the fortunate whatever. Twenty people to have seen the nine hour Book of Prince Doc. But twenty fifteen twenty sixteen was like a rough period on Prince mentally. So I will say that I sniffed around various band members, various peers of his to just be like, yeah, you know, shoot the shit and see what's up. And two of them, I finally just came out and said, so does he do I need to send you on copy of the record? Does he have it? You know? And the way they looked at each other, I knew there was a mental telepic fy thing happened. And I was like, let me in and they started laughing. And this is how I knew this is the highest honor. You know. I told D'Angelo ticket is a high honor. Word was that, you know? He refused to He's like, I don't want to. I don't want to talk about that record. I don't want to listen to it. Which, look, it happens. It happens like when I'm creating music, there are certain artists I don't want to listen to because I don't want to be derivative of it or whatever. But you know, the whole point was that when Prince passed, d and I probably have one of our longest conversations just about like and I try. You know, I was very careful to not I know what scares him off, and you know, but I would still speak in terms of, like, you know, the balls in our court now, like the way that you were ten year old or an eight year old when Dirty Mind came out and then purple rinting, like you were a kid and that built you. There are people that are doing that now with Voodoo. That's one thing I will say. He was absolutely unaware of the Voodoo renaissance. You know, I'd explained to him Pitchfork had done a review of the album like ten to fifteen years later, and it was so eloquently written that suddenly the second round of you know, these Pitchfork based you know, D'Angelo fans are coming to the plate, and I feel as though that's the you know, because I'll be honest with you, the day that we finished mastering the record, we took a victory dinner, like literally when the album was done. Okay, so the very last day of mastering. The night before, we tried to fit There's one more song that didn't make the record, called the City, that was supposed to come right after Player Player before Devil's Pops called the City and we recorded it, mixed it the night before. You know, Russ went to go master it with Tom Coin, and I took over the studio that because it was free ID and Russ permission to use that studio. I believe that pass of day La Soul wanted me to try to fill in a drum break that they couldn't clear for the AOI album. They couldn't clear the the ot to Billy Joe break from view. So I redid it while the albums get mastered, and then Russ came in, like here it is the final sequence, and me pass Russ. We listened to Voodoo for the first time, and it was weird, like it was over. It was like four years of living in this basement at an electric lady from like ninety six to now. I got a copy of it and I felt victorious. So the first thing I did was I went I had date night that night, and I remember I went to some like soul food restaurant uptown and I told them, I'm like, yeah, man, I got I got that new d' angelo record and whatever. And they were like, oh okay. They put it on and uh, right after player player, they like lowered the volume. Then they put on like R Kelly, they put like regular R and B. And I was telling them like, no, no, no, it's it's the entire record. He said, oh, you know, we thought it was just one song or whatever. And you know, I'm not trying to brag to them, like yo, I'm giving you guys gold, like I'm letting you listen to this D'Angelo record. But for me, it was like the last four years of my life. And I got to tell you, man, there were eight people I played the record for and they all hated it. My assistant hated it. One of the tour managers hated it. I think my manager Rich had jokes like you don't even know what the fuck he's saying, like where's the single? You know, it's like that environment it was. It was. It was two thousand and you know, so I kind of had the feeling that, uh, I was like, shit, I ruined this guy's career, and so I almost felt like I owed it to him to see it through by doing the entire tour with him, which was not good news in the Roots camp because we just want our Grammy and it's like, okay, let's cash in the roots. You know, we got momentum, let's go on the road. And it's like, oh, by the way, I'm going to take all two thousand off and tour with this guy, which you know, I've many threat memos of yo, man, like what the fuck? You know, that sort of thing. But all that's to say is that you know I told D, like, you know, we have a responsibility now to see the mission through, and now that D's not here, I feel that responsibility more than ever. So, you know, James myself balal like the fragments that are left of the Soul Aquarians. You know, we spoke. The family is going to get back together, and you know it's it's not a down. Sorry for being like the long expansive explanation that this is probably twenty five minute explanation.

00:09:24
Speaker 2: I think you gave Charlie more than they bargain for.

00:09:26
Speaker 1: There you go, I gave you a whole episode. Eric got the two parter.

00:09:30
Speaker 2: I'm going to frame it a little differently in twenty twenty six, What is your relationship with that site aka ok player and why did you stop posting?

00:09:41
Speaker 1: I think the goal for okay Player was always for me to take the training wheels off and see it, see if it gets staying on its own, see if it could last on its own, you know. But it's also like we just grow up. And I know a lot of the the original vets of that world say that, you know, once Twitter came, I abandoned the site, which is probably the case, but it wasn't you know, a time where I woke up, I'm like, you know, what, fuck this site? I don't care. It wasn't that, you know, I gave my entire life to that site. Like you gotta understand that between nineteen ninety nine and two thousand and six, I mean I would dedicate somewhere between two on a slow day to sometimes like ten hours every day. Like in hindsight, especially in light of the uh the kind of black Twitter doc that came out. I mean, I still stand on Tinto's when I say that I believe that okay Player was the beginning of social media. You know, it was really only the roots website for a quick Year and then there's something much more than that. But you know, I don't. I guess now you can say my relationship with Okay Player is because I still get you know, artists that come up like, yo, man, why y'all say this shit about my record? I guess I have Okay Players sort of how like Russell or Rick has def GM you know, like whatever the smallest steak is, I mean, it's still very much alive. And you know, I do know that Okay Africa has definitely taken legs of its own and help and spread the gospel of like new afrobeat and whatnot.

00:11:41
Speaker 2: But and you did appear on Don Will's Almanac of Wrap podcast, which Okay Player produces their recent web win.

00:11:48
Speaker 1: Absolutely yes, shout out to you guys winning. Yeah. I grow out of stuff sometimes and I do other things.

00:11:55
Speaker 2: So this is eric second that was actually like a two part run to itself.

00:11:59
Speaker 1: But here's the third.

00:12:00
Speaker 2: De Newmont Easier question, what is the likelihood we will get liner notes for the next roots album, whether written or podcast form.

00:12:09
Speaker 1: We'd love to have them. You know, I've never stop informing people, like even if you look at the the I mean, the only thing that I don't do is as much anymore. Is like the mammoth Mammoth mammoth Instagram posts. Well, one there's a character limit. And two, my my publisher hates when I give music lessons away for free. It's like that could have been in the book. So I will say that I know if I don't come with liner notes for this next record, you guys will kill me. I do know who my audience is, and I know that a new roots album isn't just us releasing a roots album, but it's it's it's sort of figuring out a way to give you guys a feeling. But that said, and this is not you know, a preface or any or any warning or that sort of thing. You know, nineteen ninety nine was also nineteen ninety nine, So I want you guys to to understand that. In other words, Okay, I'll give you a great example. The Supreme Clientele two point zero record. Definitely an older sounding goes face killer, Like his voice is going down in texture and tone, so kind of that whiny trademark God make it, you know, like that's of the past, and we can't penalize him because, you know, a fifty six year old sounding goes is way different than the twenty six year old one that we have, So people also just need to know that people grow. But that said, this next Roots album is also the first album in which after Things Fall apart, like Roots Album sort of became a community project, but Things Fall Apart was like, you know, the album that I feel as though I had the most time in the driver's seat, despite the mini fumbles like shout out to Eve getting her retroactive grammy anyway, that said, yeah, I will include all the treats that it will take for you guys to come back to the yard. But that also said, you're talking to a guy that collects records like the oxygen he breathes, And that said, I know the live album is nothing exciting. I know a live album from a group that's been around for thirty years is not exciting. But I promise you I treated and produced that Roots Live at Blue Note album as the hardest musical cynic of all time. And everything I hate about live albums, everything I hate about groups that are forty years after their existence, I was acutely aware of those things, and I still say that do you want more? The Roots Come Alive? To record. It's probably one of our best albums in a minute, even if it is a time capsule. I mean. And the thing is a lot of vets from OK player are like, oh damn, I didn't know y'all. This like I'm dealing with the oh damn, I didn't know y'all was still good. Well, thanks a lot, so, you know, but just to let you know that's there as well, and it's worth a listen. And this is from the guy who finally listened to the entire Prints, Diamonds and Pearls five hour box set and was shocked that I put a nineteen song mixed together of what I feel is a masterpiece of an album. So you know what I was saying, You know my feelings of Oh I was wrong about this album. There's some things I do like, yes, come back to the roots.

00:16:09
Speaker 2: Far easier question from Raymond. You did DJ sets during the Lockdown that we're on YouTube and have now been taken down. If it's in your control, wink wink, is there any chance they can reappear?

00:16:20
Speaker 1: I know I'm sitting on kind of a historical gold mine. Yeah. Absolutely, positively documented every moment the of the lockdown, all those DJ sets are somewhat preserved at the time when we thought the world was coming to an end, you know, YouTube and all the publishers out there, like I'd to physically call them all and be like, yo, call the dogs off. I'm trying to entertain people, trying to keep them sane, and I thought they'd still be up there. But of course once the world came back to normal, all those things started disappearing. Understandable. Really, the question is, you know a lot of people are asking me, like, why don't you go back to doing that? Well, I'll ask you, guys, do you want me? Is there a way that we can take a pull to see if it's even worth me going back to a ninth job and coming back to DJ. Yeah, I still have my Twitch platform, but it's just like once I entered the world of movies.

00:17:25
Speaker 2: Man only twenty four hours in a day.

00:17:28
Speaker 1: So that's how much work it is. Question. Loum Show is a production of iHeartRadio.