Prince
My guest today is Ahmir Thompson, aka Questlove, the drummer and founding member of The Roots, as well as an author, a DJ, and an Oscar-winning film director.
A song that changed my life is “Double Trouble” by The Roots, and the liner notes that Questlove wrote to go with the song. There’s a change in the drum sound in that song that blew my mind, and Questlove wrote a little bit about the effort that went into getting that drum sound. And as a drummer myself, I wanted to know everything about that. And that moment 26 years ago was maybe when the first seed for Song Exploder got planted in my brain. So getting to talk to him for this is really special for me.
Questlove has an encyclopedic knowledge of music. It’s really astounding. He knows so much about so many artists, and he’s just directed a new documentary about Earth, Wind & Fire, which is out now. But one of the artists he knows best is Prince. He was recently asked by Rolling Stone to rank the top 100 Prince songs. And for this episode, we talked about the song that he put at #1 on the list.
You can buy or stream “Little Red Corvette (Special Dance Mix)” by Prince here.
“Streetwave” by The Brothers Johnson
“Soft and Wet” by Prince
Right On! magazine and The Midnight Special TV series
Donna Summer
1999, What Time Is It? by The Time, and the debut album by Vanity 6
“Thriller” by Michael Jackson
Stevie Wonder and James Brown
Scott Storch
“Mellow My Man” by The Roots
