Key Change: Questlove on 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. For this episode, we talked about the song that he put at #1 on that list. For more info, visit songexploder.net/questlove. https://songexploder.net/questlove

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and, piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway.

• 0:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm going to be on tour, playing some shows this fall. I'm going to be in London on Wednesday, November 18. I'm going to be performing solo at Rough Trade Records on Denmark Street, and I'm going to be in conversation about my music moderated by one of my favorite actors and writers, Matthew Bainton. And a ticket to the show also gets you a copy of my album on vinyl or CD. And in December, I'm going to be on tour supporting S. Carry. We're going to be playing a bunch of shows in the Northeast US. So I hope to see you in one of those places. You can find all the details and get links to tickets at songexploder.net/live. That's songexploder.net/live.

• 0:55Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This episode is sponsored by the podcast, What It's Like to Be. Do you ever think about what other people's workdays look like? Satisfying some of that curiosity is the idea at the heart of bestselling author Dan Heath's podcast, which is called What It's Like to Be. In each episode, Dan interviews someone from a different profession to find out what it's like to be a professional Santa Claus, or a Secret Service agent, or a long haul truck driver, or an aerospace engineer at NASA, just to name a few examples. The show gives you an insider view into all kinds of jobs from a wide range of industries, answering questions like, what do mail carriers learn about us from our mail? There are so many jobs out there that exist only as titles in our imagination,

• 1:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  if they even register that much. This show is a chance to reach beyond what you know or think you know. If you're curious to learn more about the work lives of other people, check out What It's Like to Be, wherever you get podcasts. This episode is sponsored by LinkedIn. Anyone who's ever had to spend money on marketing knows how tricky it can be to feel like you've spent that money wisely. Well, with LinkedIn Ads, you can be sure that you'll get a great return on your investment. You can target your campaigns by company, industry, job title, and more. Spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn Ads and get a $250 credit for the next one. Just go to linkedin.com/songexploder. That's linkedin.com/songexploder.

• 2:26Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Terms and conditions apply.

• 2:30Hrishikesh Hirway?

  This is Key Change, where I talk to fascinating people about the music that changed their lives. And my guest today is Amir Thompson, aka Questlove, the drummer and founding member of The Roots, as well as an author, a DJ, and an Oscar-winning film director. You know, 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 was really special for me.

• 3:13Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Questlove has an encyclopedic knowledge of music. It's really astounding. He knows so much about so many artists. 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 number one on that list.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  My name is Amir "Questlove" Thompson, and I want to talk about a very special version of Prince's breakthrough 1983 song, "Little Red Corvette," specifically the 12-inch remix version.

• 3:59Hrishikesh Hirway?

  How old were you when you first heard Prince's music?

• 4:02Speaker 01

  I was seven years old. Prince entered my life in the most unusual way, which was my grandfather, my mother's father, had just passed away. My mother and my father lived in the East Coast, in Philadelphia, and my mother's side of the family lived in Los Angeles. And the family called my father first to deliver the news. And my father had to deliver this news to my mother, who, obviously, and understandably, was very distraught. So this is the first time I'm witnessing my mother having something close to a panic attack. Mind you, I'm seven years old. So kind of on a...

• 4:47Speaker 01

  A reflex, nothing to see here type of reaction. My sister, who's older than I was and was kind of like a parental, permanent fixture of my life, just rushes me to my parents' bedroom and instantly grabs, you know, my father's like studio headphones and puts the jack inside the radio and hands me drumsticks. Here, just practice. And what's mommy doing? No, no, just, and she turns up the volume and she puts on WDAS, our station in Philadelphia. And just as the song "Street Wave" by the Brothers Johnson is fading out, I remember Doug Henderson saying, and we got a new one from Prince.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  This is called "Soft and Wet." And I remember that my mother would remind me weekly, when I begged her, please cut my hair, that no, your Afro is your crown and I named you Amir because that means prince.

• 5:48Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Hmm.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  That was the connection. So I heard Prince's debut record as my mother is going through the most painful reaction to my grandfather's death. So that's how I remember Prince entering my life in the summer of 1978.

• 6:04Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Wow.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  But to tell you the truth, he really did make an impression on me. I saw him in my sister's "Right On" magazine. "Right On" was basically the black version of like Teen Beat magazine. Like that's where you found out about like, you know, what kind of lasagna Michael Jackson likes or, you know, the cast of Different Strokes. Like it was a teen fanzine, not like critical writing like Rolling Stone, but that's how I visually knew of Prince. But then there's a moment in 1980 in which my father happens to catch Prince's debut performance on the midnight special.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Which was a show that came on after The Tonight Show on Friday nights.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  The song he's gonna sing is called "I Wanna Be Your Lover", and if he's as hot as he is funky, look out. Right, please welcome Prince.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Now, the thing is, is that Prince, you know, in trying to establish himself as an artist, figured out the quickest way to get attention is sort of sexual controversy. And he would perform in his bikini briefs and leg warmers onstage. And so Prince makes his debut. And out of nowhere, I think a week later, my dad says to me, "Hey, that boy that sings in his diapers,

• 7:36Speaker 01

  I don't like that boy. Don't listen to him." Little did my dad know was, all you had to do was say nothing. And Prince would just been like, "Oh, whatever." But he said, "That boy that sings in his diapers", which is basically like, "Okay, let me see what the diaper guy's talking about."

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Thanks, Dad.

• 7:57Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Okay, so Prince is so prolific that by the time 1999 comes out, the album that has Little Red Corvette on it.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:05Hrishikesh Hirway?

  It's his fifth album in five years. Had you been listening to all of them along the way? Or when 1999 came out, did you suddenly have a different relationship to that album specifically?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  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 knew 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.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  As a result, my once very hip, very with-it, revolutionary hippie parents were now just listening to Christian radio, Christian television 24/7.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  And the first thing that came under fire was just the music that I was consuming. I grew up in a 3,000 record household, but they cut it off in 1981. We stopped buying records.

• 9:32Hrishikesh Hirway?

  There's a part in your memoir that I love when you write about how much difficulty you had in purchasing and keeping a copy of 1999.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had to starve for it. I was in a Christian school and when we had lunch hour, you got like a time card. Every month you had to buy like either a weekly card for lunch, which was like, you know, $15, or you could do a monthly card, which is bring in $35 and then you eat the entire month. And November 1st of 1982, I had a decision to make, which was invest in the most life-changing music I have ever heard, which was three albums from Prince's arsenal. His 1999 album, the second album by The Time, What Time Is It? And the debut album from his girl group, Vanity 6.

• 10:25Speaker 01

  And I decided to starve for the entire month of November and take my $35 lunch cart money and I purchased these three records. And the thing is, is that Prince is using technology I'd never heard, I never knew what a drum machine was or an Oberheim synthesizer. So the music sounded spacey and just a whole different world. So as a result, the way that my mind exploded with everything I heard during that period was there was nothing like the thrill, the orgasmic discovery of something that's going to change your life. And then one day, we're in church and the preacher has like all these records in the

• 11:10Speaker 01

  pulpit with them and it's like saying, you know, the demons of America are after our children. And, you know, first he did a first, like a 20 minute tirade on Michael Jackson's Thriller and devils dancing in the graveyard and da, da, da, da, da. And everyone's like clutching their pearls and, oh my God. And then he pulls out the 1999 record and instantly my mom looks at me like, wait a minute. You own that Purple album cover, don't you? And I'm like, no. And, you know, he's like up there like, and this demonic. And he turns it upside down. This is look, straight from the devil's beast. This 1999 is nothing but a 666 and a penis.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  And my mom looked at me like, you do own that record, don't you? And I was like, no, no, I don't. And instantly I went home and it was contraband. Like I had to hide this stuff under my bed in the basement. And sure enough, when it was discovered, I was punished for two weeks. And I would just plot and scheme and buy it over again. So between 1982 to like 1987, I purchased the 1999 album probably six times.

• 12:23Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Do you remember the very first time you heard Little Red Corvette?

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the week after this album comes out, I buy it. Just as drum work alone is setting off like dopamine rushes inside my 11 year old head. So in my mind, I'm trying to figure out how to make my own drums sound like what I'm hearing Prince do. And I don't know about programming and engineering and making new sounds and all those things. So, yeah, I purchased this album, took it home. My parents happened to be doing a residency. They were nightclub singers. They were in Puerto Rico. So for two weeks at my grandmother's house, who is absolutely knowledgeless about like all these things, like,

• 13:07Speaker 01

  you know, I just felt comfortable to play it and absolutely no repercussions. So I heard Little Red Corvette as the second song on 1999, like when I purchased this record.

• 13:20Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And what did you think when you, when you first heard it? What was your first reaction to it?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I've never been allergic to a catchy song.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  But Little Red Corvette didn't make an impression on me because 1999 is a triple record and the highlights of 1999 to me happened on like side three and side four in which all the experimental filler stuff was because like Stevie Wonder, like Earth, Wind & Fire, like a sign of a true artist is where your filler is. Like I never listened or looked for the hits. Like that's for mere mortals and laymen, you know?

• 13:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Even at 11, I knew that. So I wasn't focused on like the captain obvious single, you know?

• 14:06Hrishikesh Hirway?

  So when did your relationship to the song change?

• 14:10Speaker 01

  One night in April of 83, the only time I was freely allowed to listen to Prince without alerting my parents that I'm listening to the devil's music is when I'm in the basement. On weekdays, I'm required to rehearse three hours a day. On weekends, I have to put in five hours in that musty basement, roaches of rats and everything, practicing my heart out. And so I would listen to Prince records in my headphones and play to them because of course, my parents don't know the beats or anything like that. And, you know, some nights I'll just play to the radio when I'm bored of playing to the same records over

• 14:51Speaker 01

  again. Usually the neighbors start complaining if I play past 10pm.

• 14:56Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  But, you know, this is also like year number five of me having a drum set. And I think the mentality of the neighborhood was like, we'll put up with the noise because this means that he might be a success one day and escape this place. So, you know, there's always the one kid in which like none of the gang members bother him, none of the, I was that kid. It was like, Amir is going to make it. And one night during the last hour rehearsal, Little Red Corvette comes on. It was on the radio and of course, it's like, I know the song, I'm gonna turn it off. But I was like, wait a minute. I don't remember the kick drum being that loud. And so something's instantly different. I'm like, I think the album version,

• 15:40Speaker 01

  there's less kick drum or it's lower. But here it's like louder and more like, oh, I'm bobbing my head a little bit. So I'm playing along with it. And then somewhere in like the two minute mark, there's a part of the song I don't know. There's a breakdown. And black folk and breakdown. There's something primitive and beautiful about the breakdown. Meaning when James Brown gives the drummer some, or when there's that part of the song in which it just goes to its most basic element. That's when the party yells like, woo! Like that brings something out of us in that expression. And so there's a breakdown in the song

• 16:25Speaker 01

  in which he's individually playing each part that you would otherwise miss in the regular version of the song. Then at the five minute, eighteen second part of the song, Prince transforms the song. And at the time, I didn't realize what he was doing. I don't know what a remix is, right? Yeah. But I dropped my drumsticks and was like, what the hell is happening? This is not the Little Red Corvette that I know. He's singing Little Red Corvette, but the music is different. And I couldn't quite fathom it. Now, you know, in seventies, because of disco culture, you would have people that did edits.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  You know, you have these guys that would try to turn a three minute song into a fifteen minute song. So edits are one thing, but to take your song and reimagine it is another. And this is what I discovered. Prince made Little Red Corvette as his Hail Mary throw to finally get rock and pop radio to embrace him. He wanted to reach white people, middle America. Yeah. And he needed AM radio and FM radio to embrace him. So thus, he uses as his Trojan horse, the car song. Everything about the song is tailor-made to attract that audience. Even the lyrics, so like, you know, it was Saturday night and I hope that makes it all right.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Like, that's damn near cliche 101, you know what I mean?

• 17:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  And so, all the elements, the metaphors, the double entendre, the innuendos, him talking about basically, I mean, it's a slut-shaming song. You know, let's, let's, let's just get down to brass tacks. The history of unsolicited sexual vice from men to women is, you know, legendary. And this is basically, girl, you're sleeping around with way too many guys. You should be only sleeping with me while I sleep with all the girls I want to. And he used it as the car song. She's the car and she's going way too fast and you need to slow down. That's what it's about. And this song gets to number six on the pop charts.

• 18:40Speaker 01

  So, you know, for the most part, he kind of got his wish. But this is something about Prince. Prince feels as though, as long as you're ambiguous and keep people guessing, that builds interest in you. And the second that you're defined, people will get bored with you.

• 18:58Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  So as a result, throughout his career, anytime he gets notable success, he already has a defensive plan. And this is the first time he, he does that, which is, he creates a 12-inch that comes back to his black fanbase to say, "Hey, guys, don't get any ideas about me. I didn't sell out. This is for you guys." And what he does is, he turns a song, which is otherwise in a rock-friendly key of C-sharp major. Most rock songs are in major keys because that's happy. But at that five-minute and 18-second part of Little Rick Corvette,

• 19:41Speaker 01

  when he yells, "The ride's so smooth, you must be a limousine", he changes the bassline and he goes to the relative minor, which is B-flat. And then it becomes the funkiest thing ever.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  I never knew that for every song that exists, you can facelift it and give it a new key like plastic surgery. You're allowed to shapeshift the song to appease and please a demographic. So as a result, he already had his pop success with white people. But not to be outdone, he wants to remind black people, I'm still black. And here's the proof. I'm gonna take my white success and dress this thing up so that you accept it too. And when I heard that, my mind exploded because I thought I knew how music worked. And wow, now I'm listening to every song to see,

• 20:40Speaker 01

  what's the counterbalance to that song? Like, what's the relative major or the relative minor of that song? Now it's just endless possibilities.

• 20:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

  My conversation with Questlove continues after this.

• 20:59Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 21:43Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 22:00Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 22:45Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 23:29Hrishikesh Hirway?

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• 24:04Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I'm curious about this idea of like the remix and the transformation of the song and how profound that was when you heard it. In terms of how it might have affected how you approached music in your own career then.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:16Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Did you have moments where you're like, I'm gonna do that thing. I'm gonna do my version of the extended dance remix and transform this song? Or that's just gonna be in the song from the beginning?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Well, that became my gold standard, period. At least in terms of investigating a song. I can remember many a time where the Roots were crafting their first album. And during the first album, producer Scott Storch was a member of the Roots. So when we would have jam sessions, I would always yell to Scott, Scott, play the relative minor of that. And he had to figure it out. Move this corner. And then he'd do it. And then it'd be like, whoa, oh my God, like, that's the song. You know what I mean? So Prince is using major keys and relative minor keys to lure white audiences and black

• 25:11Speaker 01

  audiences to serve whatever purposes at the time. I'm using major and relative minor investigations just to start songwriting. And it turns out that I'm really a fan of a lot of dark minor chords. So everything started as happy-go-lucky. You know, like the one song that we couldn't do that to on our album was the song "Mell Am I Man?" from Do You Want More?

• 25:38Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Which, if you listen to it, it's very sunny, very happy sounding. And I was nervous. I was like, no, this is too happy, too pop. Like, let's blackenize this. And he did it. And suddenly, like, you know, the rest of the Roots and, you know, our manager and the engineer started frowning. Like, like, you can't blackenize everything a mere, like, you have to serve the song. So that's the one song I left alone. But for anything else, it was just investigating, like, is this half-full or half-empty? So that's how it affected me.

• 26:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  I saw the list that you made of your definitive ranking of the top 100 songs of Prince's career, and you put this remix version of Little Red Corvette at number one.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:28Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And that was earlier this year. So I was just wondering, what is your relationship with the song these days?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  So after Prince passes, kind of when anyone passes away, I hear their contributions just that much clearer. I had to lay off of Prince maybe for a good six to eight months after he died because I knew when I started going through his canon, I was going to listen differently. Albums that I criticized as not liking, I was going to hear differently. And sure enough, the cathartic exercise of now hearing Prince as an ancestor as opposed

• 27:11Speaker 01

  to a present living person that I know was jarring. And so I didn't want to sort of overdose on it. I wanted to kind of spread it out. So I probably gave anything from that era, 1999, I probably gave it a break for a good eight months before I returned to it to see if indeed his music hit me differently. And sure enough, it did. To this day, though, when I'm creating music, I will channel myself by just listening to the song, closing my eyes and really trying to imagine the pressure that Prince was under to make

• 27:54Speaker 01

  this happen. Because again, his title track, 1999, which should have been the breakout single, stalled at like number 41. So it didn't even reach the top 40 or the top 10. And so it's like, okay, just give me a week and I'll think of something. And, you know, I'm speaking from the perspective of someone that's been

• 28:17Speaker 01

  You know, kind of in his own nightmare of working on an album for 12 years. So I've been listening to a lot of 82 era Prince. I don't know to vicariously just maybe see if I can channel or the feel of what it is to be under the gun and you better deliver this or else it's all over, like that type of pressure.

• 28:41Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  So that's my relationship to it now. Like, I realize that when this song comes out, this is the song that's going to change his life. However, like, this remix didn't change his life. Like, he had already changed his life. If anything, this remix was created to stop the success that he's been dying to get, which is very artist-like.

• 29:03Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Yeah.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  You know, to sabotage the thing that you've been dying to have. Like, I want this. Okay, I don't want this, but I want it.

• 29:11Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You've got this Earth, Wind & Fire documentary.

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:14Hrishikesh Hirway?

  And I apologize if this is a question that you've been asked a million times, but

• 29:18Speaker 01

  Ask it.

• 29:19Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Are you gonna ever do a Prince documentary?

• 29:23Speaker 01

  I have dreams of what I would like to see. What I really want to see is work that will properly explain what Prince truly means.

• 29:34Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:35Speaker 01

  I'm way too close to Prince, just as a North Star, to really want to immerse myself into that world in that particular way, because I'm too close to it and I feel like I'm too biased. It would just be a love letter.

• 29:50Hrishikesh Hirway?

  Thank you so much.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 29:52Hrishikesh Hirway?

  You've played a big part in my musical life and it's always an honor to get to talk to you. Thank you so much.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Thank you. I appreciate that.

• 30:15Hrishikesh Hirway?

  If you want to hear more from Questlove on Song Exploder, check out the Roots episode from January 2018 and watch Questlove's new documentary, Earth, Wind & Fire: To Be Celestial vs. That's the Way to the World, which is out now. For more Key Change episodes, go to songexploder.net/kechange. This episode was produced by me, Craig Ely, and Mary Dolan, with production assistance from Tiger Biscuit. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about our shows at radiotopia.fm. And if you'd like to hear more from me, you can also subscribe to

• 30:57Hrishikesh Hirway?

  my newsletter. You can find a link to it on the Song Exploder website. You can also get a Song Exploder shirt at songexploder.net/shirt. I'm Rishi Keshi-Hirway. Thanks for listening.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Radiotopia.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  From PRX.