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
I play the keyboards. And literally, that's the song. There's no lyrics to the song. It's just a sing-along. But what Sly doesn't realize is that in his very sarcastic, bitter, middle-finger type of way, he includes everybody. And... people graphs to it. And so it dance, the music is one of those accidental number one songs that he didn't intend on catching on.
It was more of like a, just a bitter here. You guys want, you know, regular food instead of this, you know, meal I cooked up for you. Fine. Take your sandwich and get out of here. And people gravitated towards it.
Yeah. So what he includes is, you know, a very, you know, the drum beat that is played there is kind of a precursor to what we will call four on the floor. And 10 years later, four on the floor will just be, you know, whereas in the 60s, four on the floor means that the snare, the kick and the hi-hat are all doing... You know, it's teaching your body how to dance to it.
Ten years later, they'll take the snare and the hi-hat away, and it'll just be the kick. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And that will be the disco rhythm. You know, what we call boots and cats.
Boots and cats. So Sly will basically kind of give you the prototype of what... will be the disco pulse in the late 60s. But, you know, he's writing the blueprint of what modern dance music will be in 10 years.
Yes. So, again, Sly believes in micro examples like, you know, another artist will make one hook, one melody, one lyric, you know, like just one thing. Whereas Sly will probably try to cram in seven ideas at the same time. Sly puts a lot of attention to harmony, which is a church thing. So that makes people feel comfortable like, oh, they went to church because they sing harmonious.
But then Sly knows the importance of unison. Unison singing is where everyone sings in the same register. So like... Think of the idea of when Billy Joel's Piano Man comes on. That's the type of song that you hear in a bar and everyone sings together as they hold their mug of beer and sing along. So that's a very inclusive type of thing.
So when everyone's singing in the same key without harmony, it's not intimidating. Like the worst singer and the best singer. can unify. So he knew the power of unison singing, which is included, and harmony singing, which is a spectacle and type of dance rhythms and innovative bass sounds.
Just every new idea that was unexplored in 1967, 68, and 69, Sly was the pioneer and the first person to do those things.
Sly's role, Vernon Reed of Living Color kind of paints it that way. 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 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 sell humanity and everyday people's a great example.
Um, where he's essentially saying that, Hey, like 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, uh, especially, you know, during that period, during the civil rights period, especially with, um, that time in which, um,
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 Slide kind of accidentally inserts himself in the leadership position, kind of in the name of just...
trying to find relatable content to his lyrics because a lot of his music is very self-confessional and very relatable, kind of in a way that Dylan was also affecting music 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. There's always a time in American history, and 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 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...
know the messaging of his music was always encouraging always you know a cheerleader of of justice and a cheerleader of positivity um and unfortunately uh even though the music spoke of that optimism Inside, he was sort of falling apart at the seams because there is 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.
Showing 81–100 of 268 · page 5 of 14
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