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.
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Appearances
Sly's role, Vernon Reed of Living Color kind of painted that role. You know, this marks the first time that a Black singer is kind of stepping out of the roles that we were traditionally playing. You know, before Sly 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 artist, you know, to the audience that you're serving. It's almost like... Music before Sly was almost kind of a fantasy, if you will, like a means to escape your present situation. And Sly kind of uses his music as a means to escape. sell humanity.
And Everyday People is a great example where he's essentially saying that, hey, I breathe air like you do. I bleed like you do. There's some things that we have in common. There's some things that we don't have in common, but we're all the same person. And sometimes, especially during that period, during the civil rights period, especially with that time in which
Martin Luther King has died and Malcolm X has died and Mecca Evers has died and the Kennedys died and kind of the dream of the civil rights period died. That kind of messaging at the time seemed very necessary for, you know, there was questions in the air like, what do we do now? So Slyde kind of accidentally said,
inserts himself in the leadership position, kind of in the name of just trying to find relatable content to his lyrics because, you know, a lot of his music is very self-confessional and very relatable, kind of in a way that, you know, Dylan was also affecting music with his, you know, with his songs at the time. And I guess Sly wound up being the unofficial spokesperson for black people.
Yeah. There is a nun in a new, new, new, new, new, new, new.
It was risky. Yeah, it was risky because, again, this song is released right on the edge of the razor. Like, there's always a time in American history and, you know, today is no different. There's always a time in American history where we're just right on the edge, right on the precipice of like, you know, a kind of.
Explosive end result, you know, and for someone to sort of come in waving a proverbial like white flag, that's a risky thing because, you know, one, we do see the evidence of the abuse that's given. But it's also like who's going to be the first person to kind of come to half court, right? You know, to the 50-yard line.
Who's going to cross the aisle and, you know, start a kumbaya moment and sort of dismantles whatever conflicts that we have? And that's the role that Sly's music played. Whereas... the messaging of his music was always encouraging, always a cheerleader of justice and a cheerleader of positivity. And unfortunately, even though the music spoke of that optimism,
Inside, he was sort of falling apart at the seams because there's a pressure of or a burden, which is why we call it the burden of black genius. There's a burden when one puts themselves in that position where they often have to come up with the solutions or the answers to why society is the way it is.
Stand proud, yes.
So basically Sly makes the song Stand. And he completes the song and he has a kind of a test pressing demo made of it. And, you know, he takes this record demo to Whiskey A Go-Go in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard, which was, you know, 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 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... you didn't put a get down part in. And he's like, well, what do you mean?
He's like, you got to have a part in the song that just like wakes people up and makes them want to like really get down. And he's like, oh, get down part. And so he leaves the club that night and around one in the morning, he calls the band together and says, hey, we need to add something to the song that really just wakes it up out of nowhere.
So kind of in the last minute and 15 seconds of the song, this tension-building kind of structure of the lyrics comes to this feverish, climatic end where the song totally changes from what it was to something totally, completely different. And he creates a get-down part, what we will now know as a breakbeat.
You know, the part of the song that sparks magic, that makes people really want to dance and get down to it. And I kind of think that was Sly's... not to the black community, you know? Because by that point, Sly was such a pop hit, but he really didn't have much numbers on the board for his black audience. Like when he first came out the box, his white audience immediately latched onto him.
And sometimes I know with certain black artists, Even though it's unspoken, one of the burdens of black genius is sometimes like the burden of being white people's favorite black person. You know, that's that's often like kind of a mark of shame, like, oh, man, I got to get right with my people first before the rest of the world loves me.
So I almost feel as though in a sort of code switch way, he wanted to add a part to that song that really made black people say, oh, OK. He's still down with us. You know, so he adds this really funky part at the end that really solidifies his genius.
Yeah, I mean, the thing is, is that one of the burdens, especially with Black success, is that, you know, you might lose yourself. And oftentimes, like, look, I'll be very honest with you. Even though my experience with Summer of Soul was one of the most magical, transformative moments of my life, there were many a time where
You know, besides the Oscar, like, there were, like, 40 other awards that I won also in the circuit of film festivals. And, you know, by the 20th, I would tell... My manager's there. I'm like, man, can we pull out of some of these things? There's a fear of winning because if you're too successful, then you're singled out.
Showing 21–40 of 268 · page 2 of 14
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