Questlove Reaches Into The Mailbag & Answers - August 6

Questlove is back to answer another batch of listener questions. This mailbag edition with Ahmir and Cousin Jake dives into recent episodes while revisiting classic Roots and Dilla history. Quest' clarifies a detail from the recent DJ Muggs episode https://tr.ee/Y4PQLwIxBg, agreeing that Muggs essentially pioneered Hip-Hop's dark, dusty psychedelic sound. He also unpacks the backstory behind Phrenology's "roll call" segment, explaining how a reclaimed Slum Village beat, Ursula Rucker, and an exhaustive Ego Trip's Book of Rap Lists inspired Justin Warfield's memorable closing shout-out. Elsewhere, Quest reflects on the Electric Circus sessions with Common and shares his perspective on J Dilla during the Welcome 2 Detroit era. The episode closes with some personal history connected to Philly dialect. Want to get your question on the show? Contact us through QuestloveSupreme.com https://www.podpage.com/questlove-supreme/. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  Hey, I'm Nile Rodgers. This fall, I'll be driving across the country, meeting some of today's coolest and most fascinating artists. We'll explore the stories before the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the moment where it all began. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln Original Series, on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  The Questlove Show is a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:24Speaker 03

  What's going on? This is Cousin Jake, one of the producers of The Questlove Show. We are back here for a mini-episode with the man, the myth, the legend, Questlove.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Man, we've been taping up a storm lately. You know, our dedicated readers have been sending in questions.

• 1:39Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:40Speaker 03

  I encourage everyone, you know, go to questlove supreme, theoldnameofthepodcast.com. There's a great contact us. You can also, you can DM the QLS channel, not a mere direct, or you can leave us a thoughtful comment on YouTube. We'll try to get the good ones answered.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:55Speaker 03

  But yeah, we got one actually today. So, one of our new episodes is with DJ Mugs of Cypress Hill.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  The Black Sunday comment?

• 2:03Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 2:04Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:04Speaker 03

  No, like, no hate. Like, people have been...

• 2:07Speaker 02

  No, no, no, not hate. The clip makes it seem like Black Sunday blew my mind. When I was telling the Han Soul story, I meant to say the debut album.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  Oh, the self-titled.

• 2:15Speaker 02

  But I was telling him that I got hired when Black Sunday was, was finished.

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  However, and people were like, "I think you meant the debut record." And that was, that's the thing I wanted to make clear, that when I'm talking about how my mind was blown, Han Soul played us, me and Tariq.

• 2:32Speaker 03

  The 91 album.

• 2:32Speaker 02

  The 91, the self-titled album.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Interesting. What was funny too, and, and you know, there's a couple of things, and this happens when you're doing podcasts, like, Mugs, in the clip that, by the time you hear this, the animation's out, and, uh, thank you, by the way, you put up all our animations in your stories the other day. You just went ham.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  It's my favorite thing.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, shout out to Nick. But he had mentioned that Funkmaster Flex, when he was doing A&R, almost signed Jump Around by House of Pain on a single deal. Mugs had attributed Flex to being at Priority Records, he was at Profile. Like, things happen, you know?

• 3:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:03Speaker 03

  That's the great thing of oral histories, but, so I hear you on the clip, it's still getting a lot of love. Mugs is absolutely getting his flowers.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:10Speaker 03

  That was an amazing episode. It touched on some of your overlapping history, back to Rough House and Studio Four. But here's the question, and this is from Sinestat Canal on YouTube.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  If I butchered that, apologies. DJ Mugs is a legend. I would say he originated the whole psychedelic, dark cinematic beats, possibly even before RZA. Many great producers and hard beats came before, but I feel like Mugs was the one who brought that special feeling, starting with Black Sunday, and especially Temples of Boom. I'm interested if Questlove, who knows music history so much better, would agree. So, I just wanted, yeah.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I will say that probably, you know, hip-hop's first introduction to just atonal music, you know, I think we can all pretty much safely say, like, Public Enemy's work, and just really introducing, like, really, really dark musical backdrops, is, you know, before Public Enemy, it was like, the goal was to, to rock the party, you know what I mean? And you use, like, the jam of the moment. And of course, I would say that Mugs pretty much, and you know, my analogy, I always say

• 4:29Speaker 02

  that 87 to 92 was the crack period, and then 92 to 97 was the weed period. And so, Mugs basically just whittled it down to something very specific. So, I will indeed say, I think that Mugs' work, and also my theory of, like, there's a person that's the pioneer, and then a person that comes right behind and really nails it. So, I agree 100% that I, I do believe that Mugs was the flag planner of a certain type of dusty, dark musical backdrop, that later the RZA came in and totally just, you know,

• 5:14Speaker 02

  knocked out the part and kinda made his, you know?

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I, I know those guys, especially through, like, the Soul Assassins compilations. There's a lot of...

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 5:24Speaker 03

  Overlapping history and just, like, pure respect, and it's funny.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  And that's why Wu-Tang members fit so well...

• 5:30Speaker 03

  Grandmasters, yeah.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, fits so well on those particular albums. And I think, did he not, he did an album with the JZA?

• 5:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, Grandmasters.

• 5:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. That's, yeah.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  All right, we'll keep it in the hip-hop space since we went there. We'll go to Steve. Can you explain a little bit more about Justin Warfield and quote, "My field trip to Planet Nine that was name-dropped on Phrenology that came out of nowhere." And it's wild, because I will say this, and you probably don't know this...

• 5:57Speaker 02

  This album became first with Justin. All right, go, go, go.

• 5:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, Justin is always messing with QLS. Shout out to Justin, you know?

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Really, it's just positioning. What I had Ursula Ruckadoo, okay, so what's being referred to is, ah, man, I hate this to this day, that I made a banger song for Fantastic Volume 2. Like, my four contributions to Fantastic Volume 2, well, namely, the, the one that did make it, which was Tell Me with, uh, D'Angelo. That's one of them. And there were two that didn't make it that featured Tariq rhyming. And then there was a fourth song that was based on this breakbeat called Disco Tech Soul.

• 6:43Speaker 02

  And Disco Tech Soul, hip-hop fans would know this as the drums of, um, Big Daddy Kane's, The Wrath of Kane. The very fast drum break. And it was a little too fast. I was trying to...

• 6:57Speaker 03

  It's by Ricky Williams?

• 6:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, the deal is, like, because Tariq is always the MC in my head when I'm creating stuff, you know, Tariq is kind of primed for a speed rap. And, you know, he comes from the, the...

• 7:11Speaker 03

  Cool G rap.

• 7:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, Cool G rap, and the Kane, like, that, like, that's his zone. And so, when I made it, Dilla wanted it. If you look up in one of those, like, Slum Village Lost Scrolls thing, they put up a, a snippet of it. So, that music that is used on the roll call portion of Phrenology, in which all those rappers are being named, started off as a Slum Village song. I believe, if you look up the Lost Scrolls album, or whatever, it's Busta Rhymes and Slum Village, and it's like, "If you're making the money, and you're making the swing, and da, da, da, da, we doing our thing." Living it up, that's what it's called. It's called Living it up.

• 7:54Speaker 02

  It did make Fantastic Volume 2, so then I hit up Dilla and I was like, "Can I take that track back?" And I took it back. Tariq didn't have nothing for it, and we had to turn in Phrenology, like, in a week. And we were already holding out for, uh, Mary Baraka to write something in The Way of Things. Water, of course, being the 13-minute piece that it was, took like, at least three days to do. Fun fact, like, Water, uh, at the time, Russell Elevato just got finished with Black, Black Licious' Blazing Arrow album, and the Breathe song, the song at the end with, like, Zach Deloach and Saul Williams.

• 8:35Speaker 03

  With three songs in one.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Right. So, I was there for that, and there for watching Russ put his magic on it. And it's, all that stuff is analog. It's not, you know...

• 8:45Speaker 03

  That was Electric Lady?

• 8:46Speaker 02

  That was Electric Lady. So, you know, Russ has all of his tools out and everything, and, like, the, just one echo could take him, like, 40 minutes to get perfectly, and we have to, the way it was crafted. And so, I sat there during that session, like, yo, this is what I want for Water. And so, we put Water together. But as far as the roll call thing is, I wanted Ursula to just name-drop all rappers' names kind of in the way that Samuel Jackson did in the Do the Right Thing roll call. We had, "We love radio, love roll call." You know, Gladys Knight and the Pips, the Jacksons, Prince, and da, da, da, da. So, that's what I wanted her to do.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Weird enough, I tried that idea again two years later, when Tariq and I flew down to Miami to work with Scott Storch. And I was like, "Well, damn." I gave the Slum Village track away as an interlude on the Phrenology record, and then I thought, "Well, since I was thinking of Do the Right Thing, why not just literally recreate the drum break from the Do the Right Thing roll call thing," which we did, and that should have been our song. Someone decided to give it to his girlfriend and that song's called Lighters Up by Lil Kim. So the Lighters Up thing with the little

• 10:12Speaker 02

  little symbol thing. That was kind of the music backdrop of what Samuel Jackson was talking about on his roll call thing. So, once again, I tried to do it again, but to answer your question, why was And Justin Warfield the last thing you heard? Simply because he's the letter W and he was the last name on the list. So I had Ego Trips Book of Rap List. And it took me like an hour to like write down every name that was inside of both of those Ego Trip books. And I just gave it to Ursula Rucker and she just read one track of like A through

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  F, next one, F through

• 10:53Speaker 02

  and Warfield just happened to be the last name on track number five. And when it stood out, I tried to, because we weren't doing Pro Tools, it would have been easier for me to just shift it inside the song so it didn't have an ending, but we did it on analog and it would have taken like 15 minutes for me to figure out a proper delay to slide it back. Cause even I thought like, I wonder if he thinks like that's a dig or a diss like And Justin Warfield. But he DM'd me, he was like, hey, why was I singled out like that? I was just like, your name was last on the list, bro, so.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  To this day, Ordinary would not have done anything and I would have not been able to put it out if Book Talk didn't back it up and if my wife and a friend didn't back it up.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  Pretty crazy how like, just one thing.

• 12:08Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:09Speaker 04

  I mean, you, I bet you, we could point to nine different things in our careers where it's just one thing, all of a sudden, if that one thing didn't happen, then I wouldn't be here.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  What you're talking about right now is what I've been talking about since the beginning of my career. There's these things outside of you

• 12:23Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  that make everything happen. These other forces somehow came into contact with each other

• 12:31Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 00

  and helped propel you to this place.

• 12:33Speaker 04

  It's just insane.

• 12:34Speaker 00

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 12:43Speaker 05

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• 13:26Speaker 03

  I feel like there's some good Justin Warfield talk at the end of the Prince Paul classic episode of QLS2.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Season of the Vic, it's still my shit, man.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  It's funny you mentioned Slum Village. We got a question too, and I'm very curious myself, like I know you had a working relationship with BBE, obviously Dilla did as well. What is your relationship to the creation of the Welcome to Detroit album? Any? And this is from Rod, by the way.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  I consider, you know, you know, it's weird. You know what's better than being on anything that Dilla created or even around?

• 14:05Speaker 02

  I happen to know that I was first to hear like seven of those songs. It's almost more of a bragging right, instead of saying like, yeah, I'm on that shit, to say I was the first to hear it. I'm not on the record, but you know what I remember? The most legendary Slum Village show of all time is a show that happens in Los Angeles. When Dilla at the last minute decides, you know what? We're gonna go rogue and do less songs on the playback machine and dat. And I'm gonna bring up two NPC 3000s.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  And so, someone has the complete show on tape.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Probably House Shoes.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  I've seen maybe five minutes of it, but I've seen a lot of the soundcheck. And so this is also the time period in which the day before, maybe two days before, the OK Player 2000 Tour is at the House of Blues. And so, all three Slum Village members are performing together with The Roots backing them up.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  And during soundcheck, Dilla starts rocking what I would call the Ohio Players interlude, which is like, I mean, really, it's Junie Morrison on Exorcist singing

• 15:39Speaker 02

  It's one of those interludes on Welcome to Detroit. Like he would play you a beat and that shit would sit in your head for like months at a time. I begged and begged and begged and begged like, yo, like that beat, I gotta hear that beat again. And he's like, all right, I'm gonna put it on the new joint. And so when he finally came to the studio, I will say that this is at the very beginning, the very beginning of what will eventually be Electric Circus. Electric Circus was kind of like a year and, not a year and a half, like a year and seven months in the making. So I think the, I don't know what the very first session was for Electric Circus. Like we had a lot of like amazing songs that like Common and Dilla just threw to the floor.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  Like it had to be super weird for it to make it to the finish line. So the first 20 songs are like really good, normal shit.

• 16:31Speaker 03

  Right. And there's a vision board in place, right? Like you know what you're trying to do.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't know that. I'm not saying like, okay, I'm gonna take a backseat, but I know if I'm really gonna be honest, Stankonia had us a little worried. Because all we knew is like, whatever comes next after Stankonia. You ever like miss a train as it leaves the station? And you wait at the platform, you gotta wait like eight minutes for the next train to come? So it was almost like if we're on those tracks and we know that a new train is coming in eight minutes and we better run our asses off to the next station to not get hit.

• 17:11Speaker 02

  After Stankonia, and we, and this includes D'Angelo. Like, we were so jarred over the radical rock star change that Stankonia was from Aquimini. That we were basically like, dude, we're almost certain that whatever's gonna come after Stankonia is gonna be even weirder than that shit. It's almost like we all knew, we better come with our most radical shit because, and this is what starts. I know for a fact that a thousand deaths for D'Angelo was the immediate reaction of, oh, I better come with it.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  And I still maintain that listening to The Roots Come Alive, which is such a slow live record, like when you listen to the next movement, it's so slow. You know, and granted, I was also like 200 pounds heavier then, so it's almost like the sluggish and the slowest of, by that point, you know, I'd lost like a hundred pounds and so three years of doing that, I was just like, I wanna do a faster record. So my mind for knowledge was the, hey, let's do a more energetic record so that when we go on stage, like we could really rock out and, you know. And I think Common also, and this is kind of when him and Erykah were making an official, so

• 18:36Speaker 02

  he was probably privy to some stuff that we weren't. All I know is that, and Dilla was the last one. Dilla was like, you know, cause by 2000, I will probably say, I think when Heary Butterflies or like something like Not in the Camp.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  You know, first it was like Music Sunny. And it was almost like, oh, like, wait, this sound is catching on to the world? Like, you know, messed up drums and all that stuff. So even then, I think his reaction was like, okay, I'm gonna do the opposite of that shit. And literally, he's like, no more 2000, no more, like he was getting like the straight Detroit, like 808, 909, and we're starting from scratch. And so it took about 20 songs before like some weird shit started to happen and then they were like, this is where we're going. I was kind of protesting a little bit, cause I figured that at the end of the day, the people just be like, ah, Amir, this is, you know, Amir's idea. Yeah, but to answer that question,

• 19:38Speaker 02

  yeah, day one of Electric Circus, he plays

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Six or seven of the Welcome to Detroit songs. And I don't know, I just consider myself like, oh, I was the first to hear that, so.

• 19:54Speaker 03

  You had the earliest access.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  That, to me, is better than, hey, I'm on that, so.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  We're gonna end on a funny note, or a different, non-musical note. This is from Alan, who I feel like keeps submitting questions, but Alan, they are all great. I want to ask this. He says, like, Questlove, no Philly accent. Others have it. Did you ever have to work on it?

• 20:12Speaker 02

  The code switch in his room. I was aware that I didn't talk like Philadelphians probably by age five when like, I remember the first time, like, I went outside to play. Mom, can I go outside to play? Okay, still, you know, and it resulted in like my first fistfight. And my first fistfight was a tie between like, like, my hair was unusual. Like, there were afros and then, like, my hair was like a lion's mane. Like, there, there's some afros that are just like hard froze. And then there's some afros that are so heavy that it makes me look like, uh, whatever that monster figure is in, in Looney Tunes.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, no, yeah.

• 20:58Speaker 02

  Like, or Muppet, but, you know, like, and it's like the orange.

• 21:01Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Figure in, in Looney Tunes, like, that person. So, just the whole, like, mom, cut my hair, cut my hair, the kids are making fun of me. And then, you know, like, me just not, because I was only, the only non-music show I was allowed to watch was PBS.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  Which at the time was, uh, working backwards, Zoom, uh, Electric Company, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, and Sesame Street. And I'll probably say that maybe taking in that much Jim Henson, it starts to wear off on you, where suddenly, your voice sounded like this. And so I would come up the street and then I got made fun of because I would say, hey, guys, you know? And then every time I go, people would be like, hey, guys, how you doing?

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Straight Frank Oz, yeah.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Like, whatever Grover or Kermit talks like.

• 21:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  So, I got relentlessly teased for just my happy, hey, guys, how you doing? And it was kind of the seeds of Rakim's Nobody's Smiling, Level the Hood. So, that ended quickly. So, my mom was wise enough to be like, you're not going outside, just listen to those records. And so, me taking in all those records is a result of me not going outside. So, I think hanging with Tariq, Tariq is the first person in my life that, like, one, he never judged me. So, to get past the whole making fun of the holes in his jeans, or like, not knowing, like, guys, I'm doing this on purpose, like, you can show your knees, like,

• 22:42Speaker 02

  they didn't know, like, that level of fashion and whatever. And so, Tariq was the dude that was just taking me around the way. And I don't know, I'm catching on to, so I think that's when, like, I really just went heavy on John. It's almost, it just wore off on me, so.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Tariq has my favorite Philly accent. I'm gonna end with a little aside. And, and what is the origin story of Two for Teen? I mean, I know it's a play on 215.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  215, or he'll say, uh, Palan, or 21 Pound also.

• 23:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. Please, if you have a mailbag question, send it to, like I said, questlovesupreme.com. DM us on IG at the QLS.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  We answer, we engage all those things.

• 23:25Speaker 03

  We read it all, and the questions are great, and honestly, they, these episodes do really well. And shout out to Open Mike Eagle, he obviously is part of this.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Dude, they, I, I, well, actually, say I get more feedback from the, the miniature episodes than from the real John, which I was like, okay, who knew? So.

• 23:43Speaker 03

  So, all right, everyone, until the next time, peace.

• 24:06Speaker 05

  Questlove Show is a production of iHeartRadio.

• 24:14Speaker 05

  This is Stugatz from Stugatz and Company Live. Buy smart, drive for less, and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it all starts with a great deal on an all-wheel-drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla Sedan, with the latest features, N-Tec, or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure-ready RAV4. And with so many hybrid models available, you can enjoy longer trips without all the stops. While Toyota's legendary resale value means you can get more at trade-in. Get a great deal today and a great value tomorrow. Shop toyota.com for deals and details. Toyota, let's go places.

• 24:53Speaker 06

  If you love music and great artists' interviews, check out Before the Moment, hosted by Nile Rodgers. This new series follows Nile as he travels across the country, talking with some of today's most fascinating artists about the moments that shaped their lives and careers. From hitmakers like Miguel to rising stars like Alex Warren, Nile explores the stories behind the careers, the songs, and the moments that changed everything. Because every musician remembers the point where everything changed. And this podcast tells the stories that came before it. Listen to Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series, on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:30Speaker 02

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.