Speaker 1: Quest Love Show is a production of iHeartRadio. What's going on?
Speaker 2: This is cousin Jake, one of the producers of The
Speaker 2: Questlove Show. We are back here for a mini episode
Speaker 2: with the Man, the Myth, the Legend Questlove.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Man, we've been taping up a storm lately. You know,
Speaker 2: our dedicated readers have been sending in questions. Encourage everyone
Speaker 2: you know. Go to Questlove Supreme, the old name of
Speaker 2: the podcast dot com. There's a great contact us. You
Speaker 2: can also you can DM the QLs channel not a
Speaker 2: mere direct or. You can leave us a thoughtful comment
Speaker 2: on YouTube. We'll try to get the good ones answered.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we got one actually today. So one of
Speaker 2: our new episodes is with DJ Muggs of Cypress.
Speaker 1: Hill the Black Sunday comment.
Speaker 2: No, no oka, no, I like no hate, like people
Speaker 2: have been I hate.
Speaker 3: The clip makes it seem like Black Sunday blew my mind.
Speaker 3: When I was telling the Han Soul story, I meant
Speaker 3: to say the debut.
Speaker 1: Album, oh, the self titled, but.
Speaker 3: I was telling him that I got hired when Black
Speaker 3: Sunday was finished.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, however, and people were.
Speaker 3: Like, I think you met the debut record and that
Speaker 3: was that's the thing I wanted to make clear that
Speaker 3: when I'm talking about how my mind was blown. Han
Speaker 3: Soul played us Me and Tuik then ninety one the title.
Speaker 2: Interesting what was funny too? And you know there's a
Speaker 2: couple of things, and this happens when you're doing podcasts
Speaker 2: like Mugs in the clip that by the time you
Speaker 2: hear this, the animation's out. And thank you by the way,
Speaker 2: you put up all our animations in your stories. The
Speaker 2: other day you just went ham.
Speaker 1: It's my favorite thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, shout out to Nick. But he had mentioned that
Speaker 2: funk Master Flex when he was doing a and R
Speaker 2: almost signed jump Around by House of Pain on a
Speaker 2: single deal. Mugs had attributed Flex to being at priority records.
Speaker 2: He was at profile like things happen, you know, that's
Speaker 2: the great thing of oral histories. But so I hear
Speaker 2: you on the clip, it's still getting a lot of love.
Speaker 2: Mugs is absolutely getting his flowers. That was an amazing episode.
Speaker 2: It touched on some of your overlapping history back to
Speaker 2: rough House and Studio four. But here's the question, and
Speaker 2: this is from sinestat Canal on YouTube. I butchered that. Apologies.
Speaker 2: DJ Muggs is a legend. I would say he originated
Speaker 2: the whole psychedelic, dark cinematic beats, possibly even before Rizza.
Speaker 2: Many great producers and hard beats came before, but I
Speaker 2: feel like Muggs was the one who brought that special
Speaker 2: feeling starting with Black Sunday and especially Temples of Boom.
Speaker 2: I'm interested in Questlov who knows music history so much better,
Speaker 2: would agree, So I just wanted, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I will say that probably, you know, hip hop's first
Speaker 3: introduction to just atonal music. You know, I think we
Speaker 3: can all pretty much safely say like public enemies work
Speaker 3: and just really introducing like really really dark musical backdrops
Speaker 3: is you know, before public Darman, it was like the
Speaker 3: goal was to rock the party, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: and you use like the jam of the moment. And
Speaker 3: of course I would say that Mugs pretty much and
Speaker 3: you know, my knowlogy, I always say that eighty seven
Speaker 3: to ninety two was the crack period and then ninety
Speaker 3: two to ninety seven was the Weed period, and so
Speaker 3: Mugs basically just whittled it down to something very specific.
Speaker 3: So I will indeed say I think that Mugs' is work.
Speaker 3: And also my theory of like there's a person that's
Speaker 3: the pioneer, and then the person comes right behind and
Speaker 3: really nails it. So I agree one hundred percent that
Speaker 3: I do believe that Mugs was the flag planner of
Speaker 3: a certain type of dusty, dark musical backdrop that later
Speaker 3: the Rizon came in and totally just you know, knocked
Speaker 3: out the part and kind of made his you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I know those guys, especially through
Speaker 2: like the Soul Assassin's compilations, there's a lot of overlapping
Speaker 2: history and just like peer respect and.
Speaker 1: And that's why we were taking members fit so well.
Speaker 3: Grandmasters, Yeah, it fits so well on those particular albums.
Speaker 1: And I think did he not do he did an
Speaker 1: album with the Ji Yeah, Grandmasters? Yeh yeah, that's yeah.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll keep it in the hip hop space.
Speaker 2: Since we went there, we'll go to Steve. Can you
Speaker 2: explain a little bit more about Justin Warfield and quote
Speaker 2: my field trip to Planet nine that was name dropped
Speaker 2: on Phrenology that came out of nowhere as well, Because
Speaker 2: I will say this and you probably don't know this, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Justin is always messing with Q less.
Speaker 3: Shout out to Justin, you know, really it's just positioning
Speaker 3: what I had Ursula rucket do.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what's being referred to is ah Man.
Speaker 3: I hate this to this day that I made a
Speaker 3: banger song for Fantastic Volume two, like my four contributions
Speaker 3: to Fantastic Volume two, well, namely the one that did
Speaker 3: make it, which was tell Me with di'angelo, that's.
Speaker 1: One of them, and there were.
Speaker 3: Two that didn't make it that feature Tarik Ryman. And
Speaker 3: then there was a fourth song that was based on
Speaker 3: this breakbeat called.
Speaker 1: Disco Tech Soul and Disco Tech's Soul.
Speaker 3: Hip hop fans would know this as the drums of
Speaker 3: Big Daddy Kane's The Wrath of Kane.
Speaker 1: They're very fast drum break and it was a little
Speaker 1: too fast I was trying to by Ricky Williams.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so the deal is, like, because Tarik is
Speaker 3: always the MC in my head when I'm creating stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, Tarika is kind of prime for a speed
Speaker 3: rap and you know he comes from the the Iambic
Speaker 3: contemporary Yeah, Coolgie Wrap and the Cane Dudu like that,
Speaker 3: Like that's his zone. And so when I made it,
Speaker 3: Dylan wanted it. If you look up in one of
Speaker 3: those like slum Village Lost Scrolls thing. They put up
Speaker 3: a snippet of it, so that music that.
Speaker 1: Is used on the roll.
Speaker 3: Call portion of Phrenology in which all those rappers are
Speaker 3: being named started off as a slum village song. I
Speaker 3: believe if you look up the Lost Scrolls album or whatever,
Speaker 3: it's Buster Rhymes and slum Village, and it's like if
Speaker 3: you're making the money and they're making a swing and
Speaker 3: we're doing our thing, I mean, living it up. That's
Speaker 3: what it's called. It's called living it up. It did
Speaker 3: make fantastic Volume two. So then I hit up Dylan
Speaker 3: and I was like, can I take that track back?
Speaker 3: And I took it back. Tari didn't have nothing for it,
Speaker 3: and we had to turn in Phrenology like in a week,
Speaker 3: and and we're already holding out for a Mary Baraka
Speaker 3: to write something in the way of things. Water of
Speaker 3: course being the thirteen minute piece that it was took
Speaker 3: like at least three days to do. Fun fact like
Speaker 3: Water at the time when Russell Elevado just got finished
Speaker 3: with Black Delicious Blazing Arrow album and the Breathe song,
Speaker 3: the song at the end with like.
Speaker 2: Zach and saw woof three songs in one right.
Speaker 3: So I was there for that and there for watching
Speaker 3: Russ put his magic on it. And it's all that
Speaker 3: stuff is analog, it's not you know, that was electric Lady.
Speaker 1: That was electric Lady.
Speaker 3: So you know, Russ has all his tools out and everything,
Speaker 3: and like though just one echo could take him like
Speaker 3: forty minutes to get perfectly, and we have to the
Speaker 3: way it was crafted.
Speaker 1: And so I sat there.
Speaker 3: Doing that session, like yo, this is what I want
Speaker 3: for water, and so we put water together. But as
Speaker 3: far as the roll call thing is, I wanted Ursula
Speaker 3: to just name drop all rappers' names, kind of the
Speaker 3: way that Samuel Jackson.
Speaker 1: Did in the Do the Right Thing roll Call.
Speaker 3: We Yet we love radio love ro call, you know
Speaker 3: Gladays Knight and the Pips, the Jackson's Prince and Da
Speaker 3: Da Da dah.
Speaker 1: So that's what I wanted her to do.
Speaker 3: Weird enough, I tried that idea again two years later
Speaker 3: when Tarika and I flew down to Miami to work
Speaker 3: with Scott Storch, and I was.
Speaker 1: Like, well, damn.
Speaker 3: I gave the Slum Village trackaway as an interlude on
Speaker 3: the Phrenology record, and then I thought, well, since I
Speaker 3: was thinking of Do the Right Thing, why not just
Speaker 3: literally recreate the drum break from the Do the Right
Speaker 3: Thing roll call thing, which we did, and that should
Speaker 3: have been our song. Someone decided to give it to
Speaker 3: his girlfriend and that song is called Lighters Up by
Speaker 3: Little Kim, So the Lighter is Up thing with the
Speaker 3: little deep, the little simple thing that was kind of
Speaker 3: the music backdrop of what Samuel Jackson was talking about
Speaker 3: on his roll call thing.
Speaker 1: So once again I tried to do it again.
Speaker 3: But to answer your question, why was and Justin Warfield
Speaker 3: the last thing you heard, simply because he's the letter
Speaker 3: W and he was the last name on the list.
Speaker 3: So I had Ego Trip's book of rap lists, and
Speaker 3: it took me like an hour to like write down
Speaker 3: every name that was inside of both of those Ego
Speaker 3: Trip books. And I just gave it to Ursula Rucker
Speaker 3: and she just read one track of like A through
Speaker 3: f the next one F through and Warfield just happened to.
Speaker 1: Be the last name on track number five.
Speaker 3: And when it stood out, I tried to because we
Speaker 3: weren't doing pro tools, it would have been easier for
Speaker 3: me to just shift it inside the song, so it
Speaker 3: didn't have an ending, but we did it on analog
Speaker 3: and it would have taken like fifteen minutes for me
Speaker 3: to figure out a proper delay to slide it back.
Speaker 3: Because even though I thought, like, I wonder if he
Speaker 3: thinks like that's a dig or a diss like and
Speaker 3: Justin Warfield, but no.
Speaker 1: He DMed me was like, hey, why was I singled
Speaker 1: out like that?
Speaker 3: I was just like, your name is last on this, bro, So.
Speaker 2: I feel like there's some good Justin Warfield talk. At
Speaker 2: the end of the Prince Paul Classic episode of QLs two.
Speaker 1: Season other Victor, You're steal my shit.
Speaker 2: Man, It's funny you mentioned slum Village. We got a
Speaker 2: question too, and I'm very curious myself, Like, I know
Speaker 2: you had a working relationship with BB obviously Dila did
Speaker 2: as well. What is your relationship to the creation of
Speaker 2: the Welcome to Detroit album?
Speaker 1: Anny Ah?
Speaker 3: And this is from Rod by the way, I consider
Speaker 3: you know, you know it's weird. You know, it's better
Speaker 3: than being on anything that Dyla created or even around.
Speaker 1: I happen to know that I was first to hear
Speaker 1: like seven of the songs.
Speaker 3: It's almost more of a bragging right, instead of saying like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm on this shit to say I was the first
Speaker 3: to hear it. I'm not on the record, but you
Speaker 3: know what I remember. The most legendary Slum Village show
Speaker 3: of all time is a show that happens in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles when dyl at the last minute decides, you know what,
Speaker 3: We're gonna go rogue and do less songs on the
Speaker 3: playback machine than dat and I'm gonna bring up to
Speaker 3: NBC three thousands, and so someone has the complete show
Speaker 3: on tape. I've seen maybe five minutes of it, but
Speaker 3: I've seen a lot of the sound check. And so
Speaker 3: this is also the time period in which the day before,
Speaker 3: maybe two days before the Okay Player two thousand tour
Speaker 3: is at the House of Blues, and so all three
Speaker 3: Slum Village members are performing together with the roots backing
Speaker 3: them up, and during sound check, Dyla starts rocking what
Speaker 3: I would call the Ohio Players interlude, which is like,
Speaker 3: I mean, really, it's it's Juni Morrison on Ecstasies again.
Speaker 1: No no boom, boom boom.
Speaker 3: It's one of those interludes on Welcome to Detroit, like
Speaker 3: he would play your beat and that shit would sit
Speaker 3: in your head for like months at a time. I
Speaker 3: begged and begged and begged and beg like, Yo, like
Speaker 3: that beat, I gotta hear that beat again.
Speaker 1: He's like, all right, I'm gonna put it on the
Speaker 1: news one. And so when he finally came to the studio,
Speaker 1: I will.
Speaker 3: Say that this is at the very beginning, the very
Speaker 3: beginning of what will eventually be Electric Circus.
Speaker 1: Electric Circus was kind of like.
Speaker 3: A year and not a year and a half, like
Speaker 3: a year and seven months in the making, So I
Speaker 3: think the I don't know, the very first session was
Speaker 3: for Electric Circus. Like we had a lot of like
Speaker 3: amazing songs that like Common and Dyla.
Speaker 1: Just through to the floor.
Speaker 3: Like it had to be super weird for it to
Speaker 3: make it to the finish line. So the first twenty
Speaker 3: songs like really good, normal, normal shit.
Speaker 2: Right, and there's a vision board in place, right, like
Speaker 2: you know what you're trying to do well.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying like, Okay, I'm gonna take a back seat,
Speaker 3: but I know if I'm really gonna be honest. Stan
Speaker 3: Conia had us a little worried because all we knew
Speaker 3: was like whatever comes next after stainkne you ever, like
Speaker 3: miss a train as it leaves the station and you
Speaker 3: wait at the platform, you got to wait like eight
Speaker 3: minutes for the next train to come. So it's almost
Speaker 3: like if we're on those tracks and we know that
Speaker 3: a new train is coming to eight minutes and we
Speaker 3: better run our asses off to the next station to
Speaker 3: not get hit.
Speaker 1: After Stanconia, and we and this includes D'Angelo, like we
Speaker 1: were so jarred.
Speaker 3: Over the radical rock star change that Stanconia was from
Speaker 3: a Quimini that we were basically like, dude, we're almost
Speaker 3: certain that whatever is going to come after Stanconia is
Speaker 3: going to be even weirder than that shit. It's almost
Speaker 3: like we all knew we better come with our most
Speaker 3: radical shit because and this is what starts. I know
Speaker 3: for fact that a thousand deaths for di'angelo was the
Speaker 3: immediate reaction of, oh, I better come with it. And
Speaker 3: I still maintain that listening to the Roots Come Alive,
Speaker 3: which is such a slow live record, like when you
Speaker 3: listen to the next movement, it's so slow, you know,
Speaker 3: And granted I was also like two hundred pounds heavier
Speaker 3: than so it's almost like the sluggish and the slowest
Speaker 3: by that point, you know, I lost like one hundred
Speaker 3: pounds and so three years of doing that, I was
Speaker 3: just like, I want to do a faster record.
Speaker 1: So my mind for.
Speaker 3: Knowlogy was the hey, let's do a more energetic record
Speaker 3: so that when we go on stage, like we could
Speaker 3: really rock out. And you know, and I think common also,
Speaker 3: and this is kind of when him and Erica were
Speaker 3: making an official so he's probably privy to some stuff
Speaker 3: that we weren't.
Speaker 1: All I know is that and Dila was the last one.
Speaker 3: Dila was like, you know cause by two thousand, I
Speaker 3: will probably say I think when he here butterflies or
Speaker 3: like something like not in the camp. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: first it was like music, Sonny, and it was almost like, oh,
Speaker 3: like wait, this sound is catching on to the world,
Speaker 3: like you know, messed up drums and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: So even then I think his reaction was like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do the opposite of that shit. And literally
Speaker 3: he's like no more, two thousand, no more. Like he
Speaker 3: was getting like the straight Detroit like eight o eight
Speaker 3: nine oh nine, and we're starting from scratch. And so
Speaker 3: it took about twenty songs before like some weird shit
Speaker 3: started to happen, and then they were like, this is
Speaker 3: where we're going. I was kind of protesting a little
Speaker 3: bit because I figure that at the end of the
Speaker 3: day the people just be like, ah, I'm mere, this
Speaker 3: is you know, a.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But to answer that question, yeah, Day one of Electric Circus,
Speaker 3: he plays six or seven of the Welcome to Detroit
Speaker 3: songs and I don't know, I just consider it myself like, oh,
Speaker 3: I was the first to hear that.
Speaker 2: So ye had the earliest accent.
Speaker 1: That to me is better than Hey, I'm on that.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna end on a funny note or a
Speaker 2: different non musical note. This is from Allen, who I
Speaker 2: feel like, keep submitting questions, but Alan, they are all great.
Speaker 2: I want to ask this, he says, like quest love
Speaker 2: no Philly accent, others have it? Did you ever have
Speaker 2: to work on it?
Speaker 1: The cochutin is real.
Speaker 3: I was aware that I didn't talk like Philadelphians, probably
Speaker 3: by age five, when like I remember the first time,
Speaker 3: like I went outside to play min got go outside
Speaker 3: to play okay steal you know, and it resulted in
Speaker 3: like my first fist fight, and my first fist fight
Speaker 3: was a tie between like like my hair was unusually
Speaker 3: like there were afros, and then like my hair was
Speaker 3: like a lion's man. Like there's some afros that are
Speaker 3: just like hard froze, and then there's some afros that
Speaker 3: are so heavy that it makes me look like whatever
Speaker 3: that monster figure is and mooney Tunes like up but
Speaker 3: you know, like it's like the orange figure in uh
Speaker 3: Looney Tunes like that person. So just the whole like mom,
Speaker 3: cut my hair, cut my hair, the kids are making
Speaker 3: fun of me, and then you know, like me just
Speaker 3: not because I was only the only non music show
Speaker 3: I was allowed to watch was PBS, which at the
Speaker 3: time was working backwards Zoom Electric Company, Mister Rogers Neighborhood,
Speaker 3: and Sesame Street.
Speaker 1: And I'll probably say that maybe.
Speaker 3: Taking in that much Jim Henson, it starts to wear
Speaker 3: off on you were suddenly you're avore something like this.
Speaker 3: And so I would come up the street and I
Speaker 3: got made fun of because I would say, hey, guys,
Speaker 3: you know, and then every time I go on, people be.
Speaker 1: Like, hey, guys, how are you doing straight frame.
Speaker 3: Like whatever Grover or Kermit talks like yeah. So I
Speaker 3: got relentlessly teased for just my happy Hey, guy's how
Speaker 3: you doing? And it was kind of the seeds of
Speaker 3: rock yim nobody smiling level of the hood.
Speaker 1: So that ended quickly.
Speaker 3: So my mom was wise enough to be like, you're
Speaker 3: not going outside, just listening to those records, and so
Speaker 3: me taking on all those records as a result of
Speaker 3: me not going outside.
Speaker 1: So I think hanging with Tarik. Tarik is the first
Speaker 1: person in.
Speaker 3: My life that like one, he never judged me, so
Speaker 3: to get past the whole making fun of the holes
Speaker 3: in his jeans or like not knowing like guys, I'm
Speaker 3: doing this on purpose, like you could show your knees
Speaker 3: like they didn't know like that level of fashion and whatever.
Speaker 3: And so Treik was the dude that was take me
Speaker 3: around the way, and I don't know I'm catching on to.
Speaker 3: I think that's when like I really just went heavy
Speaker 3: on join.
Speaker 2: It's almost it just wore off of me. So Tarika
Speaker 2: is my favorite Philly accent. I'm gonna end with a
Speaker 2: little aside, and what is the origin story of two fifteen?
Speaker 2: I mean, I know it's a play on two one.
Speaker 1: Five fine, or he'll say pound or twenty one pound.
Speaker 2: Also, please, if you have a mailbag question, send it
Speaker 2: to Like I said, questlov Supreme dot Com dm us
Speaker 2: on ig at the week Answer. We engage all, we
Speaker 2: read it all and the questions are great and honestly
Speaker 2: they these episodes do really well and shout out to
Speaker 2: open Mike Eagle. He obviously is part of this dude.
Speaker 3: They I will actually say I can get more feedback
Speaker 3: from the miniature episodes than from the real joints, which
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, who knew?
Speaker 2: So so all right everyone until the next time Peace
Speaker 1: Questlum shows a production of iHeart Radio.