Speaker 1: The Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeartRadio. What's Up,
Speaker 1: good people? This is quest Love.
Speaker 2: In addition to our weekly interviews of The Quest Loft Show,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be doing some things periodically where I'll
Speaker 2: tell you a little bit more about a guest or
Speaker 2: what's going on in my life.
Speaker 1: I think they call this musings. You know.
Speaker 2: Another thing we want to do is take your feedback,
Speaker 2: take your questions, and I will answer.
Speaker 1: Them to the best of my abilities.
Speaker 2: So I'm giving you the listeners a chance to engage
Speaker 2: with me. You could DM me to either the QLs account.
Speaker 2: Matter of fact, only dm the QLs account. Don't DM
Speaker 2: my account because I barely check my own account. Okay,
Speaker 2: follow QLs on ig or go through Questlove Supreme dot com.
Speaker 2: And you know, we'll be recording these a few times
Speaker 2: a month where I'll basically, you know, answer letters.
Speaker 1: Okay, people, this is a first for me.
Speaker 2: I am going to go through I guess it's like
Speaker 2: letters to the editor or letters to the podcaster. And
Speaker 2: we get a lot of email, and the last configuration
Speaker 2: of the show, we have not answered fan mail or
Speaker 2: fan email.
Speaker 1: But we're going to change that and do a little
Speaker 1: bit you know, one rule in life I have is
Speaker 1: to never read the comments.
Speaker 2: And I know y'all are never going to let me
Speaker 2: live down the Open Mic Eagle episode.
Speaker 1: Yes, people, I know you have to understand.
Speaker 2: The taping of that episode happened at a very, very
Speaker 2: kind of emotional time for me, so I kind of
Speaker 2: went rogue that episode. But I promise you that open
Speaker 2: Mic Egle is going to return to the Quest Left
Speaker 2: show for a proper interview, and I I have read
Speaker 2: the comments. I will I promise to improve. It's a
Speaker 2: little new for me even though it's old, but it's
Speaker 2: still new for me anyway. Probably the most asked question
Speaker 2: is about the theme music. So as a Soul Aquarian unit,
Speaker 2: people often ask have the four of us ever worked together?
Speaker 2: I'm happy to say, well, I don't want to spoiler
Speaker 2: alert it, but when the Dila dot comes out, even
Speaker 2: I was shocked. Shout out to Waiji for just always
Speaker 2: having the camera on, especially when I didn't know there
Speaker 2: was a camera rolling so wellaied actually ask proof that
Speaker 2: all four Soul Aquarians played together.
Speaker 1: We've done.
Speaker 2: I guess you can say maybe three to four songs together,
Speaker 2: most notably time traveling on commons like Water for Chocolate album.
Speaker 2: But I mean that was the one time where the
Speaker 2: four of us are playing together at the same time.
Speaker 2: I mean, just to put in perspective, the Roots haven't
Speaker 2: played in a studio together as a band since Do
Speaker 2: You Want More. Actually, the newest Roots album, which is
Speaker 2: Do You Want More? Live at Blue Note. Mostly just
Speaker 2: for engineering reasons, I record separately, like I'll do my
Speaker 2: drums first or whatever. So in the case of the
Speaker 2: theme song, people are like, yeah, it sounds like Jones
Speaker 2: and my bones. DiAngelo's playing what he calls the Flying
Speaker 2: j patch. Probably the most genius thing about di'angelo is
Speaker 2: him being one of the very few people I know
Speaker 2: that doesn't adhere to the rule of using patches. So
Speaker 2: when I say patch, when you buy a keyboard and
Speaker 2: you want sounds like hey, let me get some bells
Speaker 2: or offenders, or I want a piano sound or some strings,
Speaker 2: you call those patches.
Speaker 1: So d'An angelo is.
Speaker 2: The only person I know that have the ingenuity to
Speaker 2: not want to just use the factory settings. Actually, D'Angelo
Speaker 2: and Prints are the only people I know that will
Speaker 2: quote unquote hook up their patch settings. So in other words,
Speaker 2: most of us will just take the machine out the box,
Speaker 2: plug it in and start working with what the manufacturer
Speaker 2: gives us.
Speaker 1: But there are options to change sounds.
Speaker 2: So that particular Jones and my Bones patch is the
Speaker 2: D'Angelo what he calls the Flying I don't know why
Speaker 2: he calls it the Flying j but it's essentially a
Speaker 2: filtered colimba that also has phase on it. Phase is
Speaker 2: kind of the sound when you play two records at
Speaker 2: the same time and they sound like they're squeezing together
Speaker 2: in and out.
Speaker 1: That's called phasing. So these playing.
Speaker 2: Flying j on that Dyla actually made that beat. He's
Speaker 2: flipped Jones of My Bones a few times. If you
Speaker 2: listen to You for You on Fantastic volume two, that
Speaker 2: little noise is from Jones of my Bones. So what
Speaker 2: I do know is that the night that we made
Speaker 2: tell Me for some Village.
Speaker 1: Is fantastic with D'Angelo on it.
Speaker 2: The night that Me d Dyla made that joint, we
Speaker 2: also just jammed for like two hours, and a lot
Speaker 2: of that was on tape. So Dyla actually took the
Speaker 2: di'angelo Flying j patches and hooked up a beat. Initially,
Speaker 2: Common was going to rhyme to that on like water
Speaker 2: for chocolate didn't happen, and so that was kept in
Speaker 2: my pocket. James Poyser added his keyboards probably last, and
Speaker 2: I wanted it to be a full soul Querian affair.
Speaker 2: So anyway, that's the long sort of history of the.
Speaker 1: Theme song I'm using.
Speaker 2: I wanted the soul Quarians to represent, So that's what
Speaker 2: it is, all right.
Speaker 1: What else we got we got.
Speaker 2: James Bradley, a tenth grade student at wild Lake High
Speaker 2: School in Maryland. Shout out to wild Lake High School
Speaker 2: in Maryland. He asked me to sort of share my
Speaker 2: thoughts and wax poetic on the subject of drumming. You know,
Speaker 2: we know that two of the most universal forms of
Speaker 2: communication and language. Numbers are one thing, and music is
Speaker 2: the other. The sound of the drum is sort of
Speaker 2: how Africans communicated. That was the original cell phone, That
Speaker 2: was the original Social media to me, are really important.
Speaker 2: There was a point in the early aughts where I
Speaker 2: was a little concerned because there was a period in
Speaker 2: hip hop the kind of a rival of snap music.
Speaker 2: Some of DJ Premier's Premiere actually confessed to me that
Speaker 2: it was my very own platform of OK player that
Speaker 2: was ragging him about his high hats and so thus
Speaker 2: premiered for the last twenty five years, decided no more
Speaker 2: high hats, which is kind of weird. I didn't know
Speaker 2: that OK player had that much power. But one of
Speaker 2: the things that I celebrated with the new Premier NAS
Speaker 2: album was Premier bringing the high hats back for the
Speaker 2: first time.
Speaker 1: In a long time. But yeah, you know, drumming is.
Speaker 2: A communal kind of exercise and communication and rhythm speaks
Speaker 2: to your chakra. It's a metronome, it's a traffic cop.
Speaker 2: I highly recommend it. Shout out to Wild Lake High
Speaker 2: School in Maryland. All right, Scott Steinhardt wrote, I mentioned
Speaker 2: in passing interviews on the podcast and in other places
Speaker 2: another person from a younger generation is doing what you
Speaker 2: are doing, but different and you mire their approach and
Speaker 2: who is this person and what are they doing differently?
Speaker 2: I would probably say minus the scarcity marketing, which kind
Speaker 2: of frustrates me a little bit. But you know, what's
Speaker 2: good for the goose might be good for the gander,
Speaker 2: and that person to me, I think inflow just what
Speaker 2: he's doing now with community, I mean, I love the
Speaker 2: idea of community. Of course, one of the first examples
Speaker 2: of community that I saw was the Juice Crew and
Speaker 2: hip hop. The Juice Crew consistent of Big Daddy Kane,
Speaker 2: Bismarquis mc shan, Roxy and Chante g Rap collectives you know,
Speaker 2: like the Native Tongues, a tripe called Quest Dal La Soul,
Speaker 2: Jungle Brothers.
Speaker 1: Salt one of my favorite groups right now.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is their tenth year and they're using
Speaker 2: scarcity marketing to the hilt. All their album covers look
Speaker 2: the same. We barely know who's in the group, you know.
Speaker 2: Imagine my shock. I was at dinner one night with
Speaker 2: a friend and I was trying to put her on
Speaker 2: the sault and imagine my shock when she's like a mirror.
Speaker 1: That's my group.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Melissa aka Kid's sister who you know
Speaker 2: back then swore me to secrecy. But I think it's
Speaker 2: pretty much known that Salt is a collective featuring an Inflo,
Speaker 2: Cleo Soul, Kid's sister, Chronics, few other members that I
Speaker 2: don't know. You know. Again, I think as a as
Speaker 2: an initial marketing plan, it's genius based on no video,
Speaker 2: no visuals whatsoever. Like Cleo Soul sold out Radio City
Speaker 2: Music Hall like three nights in a row just on
Speaker 2: the buzz alone.
Speaker 1: So that shows me the power of music and that
Speaker 1: you don't need.
Speaker 2: To subject yourself to silly marketing schemes or whatever like.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the music can speak for itself. So it encourages me.
Speaker 2: But right now, you know, the world needs Salt more
Speaker 2: than ever, So I wish that Inflo had my mojo
Speaker 2: in terms of wanting to tour and get out there.
Speaker 2: Oftentimes studio geniuses want to stay just in the studio
Speaker 2: and only in the studio. I mean it just that
Speaker 2: way with Dilla, was that way with Brian Wilson of
Speaker 2: the Beach Boys, is that way? We're prints like you know,
Speaker 2: but sometimes you need to go out and preach the gospel.
Speaker 2: And I consider Salt really a gospel group, and gospel
Speaker 2: doesn't mean religion, just more spiritual and based on how
Speaker 2: healing the Cleo Show was, this is one of the
Speaker 2: cases in which I think more salt actually means healing
Speaker 2: for people. People need a soundtrack of healing right now.
Speaker 1: So there you go.
Speaker 2: Also, Scott says, PS, sorry I rushed you at thirty
Speaker 2: Where I can ask you for a selfie thirteen years ago?
Speaker 2: I don't remember, but okay, you're forgiven. I mean everything
Speaker 2: I said about Game Theory fantastic record and simply underrated.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Scott.
Speaker 2: I appreciate that Game Theory is kind of a sad
Speaker 2: period initially. I mean I've told the story before. We
Speaker 2: were just about to purchase two houses in New Orleans
Speaker 2: and we were going to relocate to Louisiana because like
Speaker 2: there was a vibe down there. Lenny Kravitz was living
Speaker 2: down there and telling me, like, yo, I need to come.
Speaker 2: So Lons was down there. It was like, yo, you
Speaker 2: need to come. My friends had and I love New Orleans,
Speaker 2: like I think if I were to live down south,
Speaker 2: that would be the city. I mean, Austin is my
Speaker 2: favorite city of all, but I think New Orleans is
Speaker 2: in second place. And so we wanted to go to
Speaker 2: New Orleans basically just to explore the music scene down there.
Speaker 2: They're big on jazz but also bounce music and also
Speaker 2: like you know, zidago and marching bands and line bands
Speaker 2: and whatnot. And there was a brass band that we
Speaker 2: saw down there called the to Be Continued Brass Band,
Speaker 2: and they reminded us of us when we were first busking.
Speaker 2: They were slightly different than your average line band, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. And so we thought, Okay, we're
Speaker 2: going to get this band on the next record. So
Speaker 2: we had it all planned out from two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: January two thousand and five to August, we just toured
Speaker 2: and then in August we had our house and we
Speaker 2: were going to fly to New Orleans and record this
Speaker 2: Game Theory record.
Speaker 1: It started to rain and it didn't stop.
Speaker 2: Raining, and it destroyed the two cribs that we were
Speaker 2: going to move to, and so we just decided to
Speaker 2: stay in Filly and record. And this is actually how
Speaker 2: Tuba got in the group, Tuba Gooding Junior. We had
Speaker 2: so much lined up for like a brass band to
Speaker 2: play that we didn't want to throw the idea out.
Speaker 2: So we went to our comrade, Sir Jeff Bradshaw of
Speaker 2: Brass Heaven of Philadelphia, and told him to put something together.
Speaker 2: And we toured with that unit, that brass unit, and
Speaker 2: like this so much. We stole Tuba. We kept him
Speaker 2: in the group and he's been a spark of energy
Speaker 2: ever since having him in there. So yeah, not to
Speaker 2: mention like Game Theory was also made at the time
Speaker 2: when Dyla was really sick and dying, and his kind
Speaker 2: of took me out the game.
Speaker 1: That's kind of when.
Speaker 2: Besides, you know, I would do like maybe an occasional
Speaker 2: Al Green, an occasional Elvis Costello, like I would do
Speaker 2: like a legacy artist, just one, but this whole like
Speaker 2: me living in the studio and working, and I don't know,
Speaker 2: I just lost my fire for it. So, you know,
Speaker 2: game theory is kind of a mournful record. But there's
Speaker 2: no record that the Roots released that I don't put
Speaker 2: my heart into, even if it's a sad thing.
Speaker 1: But I'm glad you like it, Scott, thank you. Okay.
Speaker 2: So an anonymous commenter listen to my appearance with Christian
Speaker 2: McBride on Norah Jones is Playing lawng podcast and said
Speaker 2: to me, I said that me, Christian and Kurt Rosenmrinkle need.
Speaker 1: A project together. Any chance, I would love nothing better.
Speaker 2: There was actually a moment when Joey de Francesco was
Speaker 2: alive in which the four of us Joey de Frincesco
Speaker 2: master organist, Christian McBride, bass player, Kurt Rosenwinkle guitarist, and
Speaker 2: myself on drums, we were going to do a gig
Speaker 2: at the Blue Note shout out to Little John Roberts
Speaker 2: were filling in for me. However, I wasn't able to
Speaker 2: make that gig. Wish I would have made it, because,
Speaker 2: of course, our dear friend Joey di Francisco passed away
Speaker 2: shortly thereafter, and I should have been there, but I
Speaker 2: was on the road. I would love to do more
Speaker 2: jazz projects. I kind of shy away from those types
Speaker 2: of projects because I just have so much on my
Speaker 2: plate already, and I feel like any album that really
Speaker 2: has to show me in a sharpened musical skill set,
Speaker 2: I tend to overthink it. But overthinking is very twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five to me, so now that we're in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six, I'm open to any idea