Whatever.

Exactly.

I'm Questlove.

I play drums in The Roots.

I was right there for that whole exchange.

You could feel the tension between Jimmy and Tariq.

It was so raw.

And I keep on asking myself, why?

Mm-hmm.

Um, so the deal is is that, you know, pop songs really weren't like the, the, the pop music effect of song making really didn't get honed perfectly into hip hop until, I'll say yeah, you know, there's a few moments in 1991, '92 where there's so like pop song structure.

Like I'll say that, you know, for people, especially now that people are watching the Jay-Z documentary and, you know, the am- insane amount of people I gotta explain why Rick Rubin's interviewing Jay-Z and why he's so important to music.

You know, Rick Rubin's biggest contribution to the music is the fact that through LL Cool J, like Rick Rubin whittles down what was once like, before LL Cool J most hip hop songs were made for the club.

You know, eight-minute songs, 12-minute songs.

And Rick Rubin's like, "I come from the school of the Beatles.

Like let's have 16 bar verses and a chorus, 16 bars and a chorus, and then we fade at three minutes," which was like, so when people wanna know like why LL's so important, like LL literally created the, the, the s- the standardized album format so that songs can be three minutes and four minutes.

Wow, yeah.

How did he get involved with music?

The one thing I've, I desperately wanted to unpack that's hard to do is he had his metaphysical calling at the age of seven, which is really unheard of.

There's a story of him being in a cotton field and him looking at the sun, and the thing is is that, you know, you brought up something about his childhood.

Like, we say it so casual now, like, he was raised without his mother.

His mother and him grew up dirt poor in Memphis, and she said, "The only way that I can make a better life for both of us is if I leave Memphis and go elsewhere to, to build a better life for you." And so she took a risk and gave him to the next-door neighbor and said, "I'll come back when everything's right." And of course, well, you know, by the time he was 18, she came back, said, "Hey, I have a family now.

Let, let's go to Chicago." And so what I wanted to know is, like, how does this person who feels this way, like, most people would go the opposite way and lash out at the world.

And, you know, we often live through a time now where people want you to feel the pain that they feel inside.

Right? So what was his life like in California?

Yeah.

And once we realized that D'Angelo's more or less, like, an act that takes a decade and a half to make an album, Common decided to set up shop there as well, and we worked on his record.

This is, like, Common's signature song, but I remember telling Common, "Eh, I don't like it.

I could do without it." So, you know, we, we used the, what I call the thriller method, and the thriller method was every other week we would sit in the studio and listen to what we created so far, and each person would say, "Okay, what's the three songs that are definitely staying, and what's the three songs you would lose?" And The Light was always on my list for losing because what's beautiful about the work of J Dilla is his chameleon shape-shifting of whatever type of sound he wanted to make.

I guess in this case he proved that he could just do just a regular ass hip hop song.

And to me it was like, well, there's nothing special about it.

Like, where's your signature J- J Dilla, like, messed up drums and all that stuff? And Common's like, "We don't need it.

I can hear the drums.

Had you been listening to all of them along the way? Or when 1999 came out, did you suddenly have a, a different relationship to that album specifically?

specifically?Okay, yeah.

So the thing is, is all of the hedonistic teenagers of the '60s were now mid-30s, early 40s in the '80s, and there was just a wave of guilt in America.

Like, it starts with Donna Summer, who, you know, was sort of the poster child of everything that we know about Studio 54, like the drugs and the salaciousness and all that stuff.

And in '79 she became a born-again Christian, and this was, like, so viral.

And so as a result, especially for Black America to see someone saying like, "I gotta get right with God," and all this stuff, so there was an immediate domino effect.

As a result, my once very hip, very with it, revolutionary hippie parents were now just listening to Christian radio, Christian television 24/7, and the first thing that came under fire was just the music that I was consuming.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah

... as his own personal army to get to you, the listener.

But who Maurice White was as a human being was, this is a story of a five-year-old orphan who somehow, some way, falls into metaphysics.

Now, if you're given away by your mother, and if you're brokenhearted about it, and you don't have a father, and pretty much you could die at any moment.

Like, he's left to fend for himself in Memphis, Tennessee.

Uh, and a stranger next door takes him in as one of her own.

And by the age of seven, he has this vision of, of what he calls metaphysics, and metaphysics is pretty much, um, you know, you'll hear people try to give a, a, um, differentiate, like, religion versus spirituality.

Yeah

So, I mean, this legendary band, over a half century of music, and we think we kind of know their story, but when you went into this, were you surprised by what you found?

I would.

Yeah, I guess I was surprised because the main thing of what I found was like we know who Earth, Wind and Fire is.

They're so ubiquitous, but we really don't know them as human beings.

And so what I learned was, you know, again, we know the ready made Earth, Wind and Fire.

We know the magic and the magic.

you know, all the levitation and all the stuff they do in concert and the outfits and whatnot.

And you show warts and all.

All right, so why zero in on this?

Um, you know, Earth, Wind & Fire figured out what most bands didn't, that their music could be used as a kind of a tool for peace and positivity, which was kind of a new idea in the 70s.

You know, I

But it's also revealing, like folks who thought they knew Earth, Wind & Fire.

Yeah.

People think that they came ready made, like out of space, you know, those crazy costumes and stuff.

But I mean, they've had a lot of struggles, you know, just to get that idea out into the world.

Them getting booed in my hometown of Philly.

I assume so, right?

I go through my whole Rolodex and then ...

Nah, n- um, you know, it, it, it seemed right this year.

And, you know, I think he was getting antsy.

Like, he hasn't done much since 2014 with the, you know, 444-

Mm-hmm.

Like, we only had, like, Live Aid and Farm Aid.

Um, and we wanted to bring that home.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? So Steve Ferroni takes Clyde Semplefield's left hand and takes Bernard Purdy's right hand.

But also, Idrish Muhammad does that a lot.

But with James Brown's other drummer, John Jabbo Starks, he's more of a foot guy.

So I say John Jabbo Starks.

Like he's more about the pulse.

So I'll say that even though we credit Clyde Stubblefield with being like James Brown's funkiest drummer, Clyde Stubblefield is more like boutique shopping.

Also.

Yeah, so ta- talk a little bit about that song and why you think that song is important, musically and in terms of the message of the lyrics.

So basically Sly makes the song Stand, and he completes the song, and he has a, a kind of a test pressing demo made of it.

Um, and, you know, he takes this, uh, this, this, this record demo to Whisky a Go Go in, in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard, which was, you know, the, the nightclub of the moment, and he gives the DJ the 45 to play.

And the DJ puts it on, you know, it's like a proto-disco in 1969 where teenagers are dancing in the club.

And, you know, the teenagers d- are dancing, and the song ends.

And Sly was, like, really disappointed.

He's like, "Man," like, "that song didn't hit the way I wanted it to." And at the time, the girl that he was with was like, "Well, you know, th- you didn't put a, uh, a get down part in." And he's like, "Well, what do you mean?" He's like, "You, you gotta have a part in the song that just, like, wakes people up and makes them wanna, like, really get down." And he's like, "Oh, get down part."And so he leaves the club that night, and around 1:00 in the morning, he calls the band together and says, "Hey, we need to add something to this song that really just wakes it up out of nowhere." So kind of in the last minute and 15 seconds of the song, th- this- this- this tension-building kind of, uh, structure of the lyrics comes to this feverish, like, climatic end where the song totally changes from what it was to something totally completely different.

Why?

So can you talk about that a little bit, uh, in terms of the types of music that are drawn on in Sly's music and the kind of inclusivity that he represented within the band and in some of his lyrics?

Um, [sighs] Sly's role, um, Vernon Reid of Living Colour kind of, uh, painted that, you know, this marks the first time that a Black singer is kinda stepping out of the roles that we w- were traditionally playing.

You know, before Sly, it was like you were strictly singing about love songs, in particular about relationships.

You really weren't giving any commentary about everyday life or things that are relatable in the present to the, the artist- you know, to the audience that you're serving.

It's almost like, um, music before Sly was almost, uh, kind of a, a fantasy, if you will.

Like a w- a means to, uh, escape, um, your present situation.

And Sly kind of uses his music as a means to sell humanity, and "Everyday People"'s a, a great example, um, where he's essentially saying that, "Hey," like, "I breathe air like you do.

So ta- talk a little bit about that song and why you think that song is important musically and in terms of the message of the lyrics.

And tell the story of how Deborah Harry basically broke hip hop on SNL.

Okay, so, uh, Saturday Night Live is the first time that America and the world will get to see what hip hop culture is.

The very first rap performance on TV is when Deborah Harry hosts the show in 1981 and brings on a Sugar Hill act called The Funky Four Plus One More.

And she took a liking to this group.

Even though there were other popular groups at the time, like there was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and the Sugarhill Gang, both were, like, platinum hits, um, and really music and culture-changing songs at the time.

But she took a liking to this group because it was similar to Blondie, uh, a band that had a, a woman in the lead of it.

And so she took a liking to them.

And the other rumor was, oh, there's probably lots of acts that are really lip syncing.

And tell the story of how Deborah Harry basically broke hip hop on SNL.

Okay.

So, uh, Saturday Night Live is the first time- That America and the world will get to see what hip hop culture is.

The very first rap performance on TV is when Deborah Harry hosts the show in 1981 and brings on a Sugar Hill act called The Funky Four Plus One More.

And she took a liking to this group, even though there were other popular groups at the time, like there was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five and the Sugarhill Gang, both like platinum hits, um, and really music and culture-changing songs at the time.

But she took a liking to this group because it was similar to Blondie, uh, a band that had a, a woman in the lead of it.

And so she took a liking to them.

... national TV?