Questlove
Questlove
Ahmir Khalib Thompson, known professionally as ?uestlove or Questlove, is an American percussionist, multi-instrumentalist, DJ, music journalist, record producer, and occasional actor. He is best known as the drummer and joint frontmanfor the Grammy Award-winning band The Roots. The Roots have been serving as the in-house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since February 14, 2014 and is the same role he and the band served during the entire 969-episode run of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth20 January 1971
CountryUnited States of America
In the 2000s, I became an artist. I started preserving and educating. I became more obsessed with making iPod playlists for people.
My first gig was at Radio City Music Hall when I was 13.
I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best of them. But put a deadline on me and I start getting writer's block.
The president is just the coach of a football team. You need the right support, the right stadium, the right players, the right staff. An excellent coach is not going to win games.
I prefer to unwind by DJing. I learned that from Mike D from the Beastie Boys. After a show, he would DJ. Once I saw that, I wanted to do that. And now DJing is like my lifeline. I love the power it represents.
I have a lot of those 'Forrest Gump,' I-was-there moments.
Kurt Cobain represents a very legit, realistic outlook. Before that, in my head, to be a white artist was to be privileged.
My parents were really strict about me not watching cartoons.
Jay-Z is a dude that can give you a hundred 'Simpsons' quotes, like, 'What you know about the monorail?'
Half the time, my job is basically to talk people off the ledge. It's more psychological than just me picking up some sticks and counting, "1, 2, 3, 4."
I never want to get to that level of poverty where taking a bath has to be a hot-pot experience.
It's funny, I can see the science in how music is made with other artists, but it's hard for me to dissect my own thing.
The Chronic represented everything that I hated about hip-hop as a fan, but then later represented everything that I stood for as a musician and engineer.
There's no such thing as success on an isolated level.