Amir Questlove–Thompson
speaker
268 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard May 2025
Amir Questlove–Thompson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsNo recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.
Appearances
It's almost like it's the last theme that offers a feeling but not any evidence of it. I don't know. It's like trying to put water in your pocket or something like that. Like, it's abundant, but it's not—it's whatever you want it to be.
Yes.
Well, the weird thing was it was by accident. You know, that theme for The Tonight Show, the infamous Hey, Hey, Hey, Hey song, was literally, we were kind of making fun of...
Santana's so cool and you know it was like we were just sound checking like we literally got there was like our first day on the job and they were like alright guys play something and we just started you know mocking a Santana song and just started singing a whole bunch of hey hey hey's and then attempted to write about 19 themes, none of which Jimmy liked.
And at the end of the thing, he heard the song we were mocking. It was like, that's the song. We're like, well, no, we're just messing around. That's not a real song. He's like, yes, it is. And so that wound up being the song. It's ear candy. But I admire the fact that SNL for 50 years has been able to provide a feeling without necessarily melodic evidence to it.
I will say that, you know, the first five years was pretty much, you know, SNL. The role of SNL was that was our YouTube. That was our viral video channel. For me, that was the one place where I could watch. At the time, I think my all-time favorite artist was Bill Withers. You know, there really just wasn't a show in which you can see actual musicians playing.
I mean, you could watch American Bandstand or Soul Train where they might be lip syncing. Occasionally on Soul Train, they play live, but... Back then, it was slim pickings. Either Friday night, you watched a midnight special. Sometimes, a rock concert would come on Sunday nights. But basically, SNL was just a It was a rare moment in which you got to catch a really cool band.
So even like Devo coming on, like I was eight years old when they did the Jaco Homo song. Are we not men? We are Devo. And like me and my cousins minds were blown, you know. So practically any group that came on in the first five to six years, I was an instant fan of.
Okay, so 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 Sugar Hill Gang, both like platinum hits and really music and culture changing songs at the time. But she took a liking to this group because... it was similar to Blondie, a band that had a woman in the lead of it.
And so she took a liking to them. And for me, that's such an SNL move where, you know, those first 10 years, um, They weren't about, well, who's the most popular person to bring ratings in? It was always like the cool factor, like, okay, who's the most popular person now? Who's the person under that person that we could give a boost to?
And that's like a prime example of how cool, how SNL always had their finger on the pulse of ratings. you know, who's next.
And, you know, as a result come 20 years later, a lot of those first time acts, you know, your, your, your early hip hop groups, like, you know, them getting run DMC before run DMC was run, run DMC or them getting Prince before Prince was Prince or the talking heads or Devo, whoever, like a lot of those risks that they took in the first 10 to 15 years, those guys will wind up being like the household names and, and,
the fiber of the mainstream once SNL becomes the mainstream instead of the underground. But yeah, with Deborah Harry using her power to bring attention to a culture that no one knew about, that is a prime moment of the SNL effect and how it builds American entertainment culture.
Right.
He made the absolute right choice. And, you know, that's the thing about SNL is there's a risk factor involved. And usually it starts with no. Like Eddie Murphy talks about, I did not want to do Hot Tub with James Brown. Justin Timberlake goes on and on about trying to convince Beyonce to do the single lady sketch. Like everything starts at no.
And it's like, wow, like you almost talked yourself out of history. And I'm trying to get people in the mind state that, you know, oftentimes we we get in our own heads about why something won't work. And sometimes you just got to take a risk. And you never know. This might be part of the American fiber, the history of it. But also, I know people have so many questions about.
What happens on a live show if something goes wrong? Like for me, one of my favorite clips is the Ashley Simpson moment where you hear the directors freaking out because they don't know what to do. Should I go to a commercial? What do I do?
Well, you know, Ashley Simpson had a sore throat and was a little iffy about her singing, so she opted to lip-sync instead. And her drummer, who's controlling all the music, accidentally plays the wrong song for the second song.
Right, exactly.
Showing 181–200 of 268 · page 10 of 14
← Previous
Next →