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
I've come to the conclusion that the average person can do about four things a day, like four real things a day.
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 think the music comes first, then comes the fashion, and thus, the lifestyle. I believe it starts with music, and then the person delivering it delivers the lifestyle, the fashion. Madonna is a great example of that.
Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.
Meaninglessness takes hold because meaninglessness is addictive,
Switching off perfection switched on the human quality
What I'm slowly realizing is that I believe that most of us felt that we could relax a little bit after November 2, 2008, because of the progress and the spirit that it took to get Barack Obama in The White House. And what we didn't realize, is that was really the beginning. That was really the beginning of the struggle and not the end of a struggle, to come from colonial times through slavery, through the Jim Crowe Laws, through the civil rights period to The White House as, like a point A/point B journey. Point B of course being the end.
In terms of being a 'sneakerhead,' there was one point where I was obsessively following every sneaker blog. That's the beauty of Twitter: To get the heads up on what's coming out.
I think all of this—The Roots and DJing included—was meant to prepare me for The Tonight Show.
According to my parents, I just started drumming when I was two. I traveled with them from five to seven on the road, playing percussion. Between 8 and 12, my dad sort of prepared me by teaching me every aspect of road life.
There's no such thing as success on an isolated level.
I'm not one of those people who's so blinded by my own work and my sweat. It's kind of risky writing a memoir when you're really part of a larger universe.
It's a funny word, persistence. It means not giving up, but it also means just passing on through time.
My parents were really strict about me not watching cartoons.