Testing Questlove's Music Knowledge

- Before we start the music, just introduce yourself. - My name is Questlove, hello. - Finally. - I'm here. - I don't know what to play you. - I'm nervous. - There's endless possibilities. - All my people are nervous that you're gonna play something for me and then I'm gonna tell you a 20 minute folklore story. - That's what I'm hoping for. ♪ La, la, la, la, like this, gotta be something ♪ - You really want me to tell the story of this song, don't you? - I just love this song. - The Light by Common. - Yeah. - From an album that I produced with a collective called The Soulquarians, which is me, James Poyser, Jade Dilla, shout out to D'Angelo, also a Soulquarian on the album. There's a period between '97 and 2002 in which the like-minded squad of musicians decided, hey, let's take residency in this place that Hendrix built called Electric Lady Studios, really in the name of D'Angelo's Voodoo. And once we realized that D'Angelo's more or less like an act that takes a decade and a half to make an album, Common decided to set up shop there as well, and we worked on his record. This is like Common's signature song, but I remember telling Common, eh, I don't like it. I could do without it. So, you know, we used the, what I call the Thriller Method. And the Thriller Method was, every other week, we would sit in the studio and listen to what we created so far, and each person would say, okay, what's the three songs that are definitely saying, what's the three songs you would lose? And The Light was always on my list. And I was like, what's the three songs that I'm gonna lose for losing? Because what's beautiful about the work of Jay Dilla is his chameleon shape-shifting of whatever type of sound he wanted to make. I guess in this case, he proved that he could just do just a regular-ass hip-hop song. And to me, it was like, well, there's nothing special about it. Like, where's your signature Jay Dilla, like, messed-up drums and all that stuff? And Common's like, we don't need it, like, I like this song. And so, my authority as executive producer of the record, I knew it was a battle I was gonna lose. So I was like, all right. - There's just a purity to that whole, the whole album. Common is just operating at the highest level. - When I first met him, let's just say he was somewhat tipsy. So in my mind, I kind of had him pegged out like, oh, this guy, like, he's super drunk. Yo, man, y'all dope, man. You know, like, you don't really, okay, okay, cool. And, you know, because we lived in Europe for so long, we lived in Europe for like four years, we really didn't have, like, our community. - Yeah. - You know, so Common was the first established hip-hop peer that, like, liked the roots and co-signed and hung with us. He became the Billy Preston to our Beatles while we were making "Things Fall Apart." - One for one. - You know what, I don't know what this is, but let me figure it out. Well, that's Roland Chambers' guitar. I know that, oh, it's Teddy. "Don't Leave Me This Way." I totally forgot that. - The intro. - Yeah, I forgot that Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes made "Don't Leave Me This Way" first before Thelma Houston. ♪ Don't leave me this way ♪ As a kid, I went to the Philadelphia Performing Arts School, but every day, you would hear a slight sort of burst of screams. This is how you know Teddy Pendergrass has arrived to Philly International Records, which happened to be right next door. So every day, like clockwork, you would see this Rolls Royce double-parked in the streets. And Teddy Pendergrass would get up and he would sign all the autographs, and the women would just faint. It's like they knew he was coming to the office every day at 12:30. He represented something new. It was very rare for black singers, especially in the 60s and 70s, to sing with almost like an authoritative baritone. When you think of like soul singers, and you're wondering about like, "Why is someone singing falsetto?" They were mindful of not coming off too threatening. - Yeah. - Teddy Pendergrass was a very authoritative, "Gasper Fischer!" You know, "I was singing!" Teddy Pendergrass was the sound of most black fathers after you don't take the garbage out. And you hear the garbage truck outside, but you know that your son might've fallen asleep on the couch, so, "The cover, meh, meh, meh!" When I hear Teddy Pendergrass's voice, I'm like, "Oh God, I didn't take the garbage out. I'll be right back." - Me too. ♪ It's nice to know ♪ - You know what it is about Karen Carpenter's voice? Her voice is so comforting that it's almost like, if you were to just do this, and you know that someone's gonna receive you and catch you. But on top of that, dude, she was a hell of a drummer. But also, I don't know a greater arranger of harmonies than them. So it's almost like the Carpenters come with the harmony structure, which is out of this world. But also, the craft of the songs they sang. And yeah, the majority of them were, you know, Bacharach, Hal David, names that can't lose in terms of crafting songs. And the last weapon, of course, is just her voice. They don't make 'em like that no more. - She's like that, you know the teacher in school who's been there for like 30 years and is like the nicest-- - Your favorite teacher. - And your favorite teacher. - Your favorite teacher. - Has that voice. - Yes. - She's Ms. Lewin, Ms. Earls, like all my favorite teachers. ♪ Money, money, money, money ♪ - Yeah, man. For the love of money by the OJs. - I can hear the drums. - Cleveland, Ohio's own the OJs. To me, one of the greatest, what I call one-two punches. One-two punches are groups that have two vocalists. In The Temptations, it used to be Eddie Kendricks and David Ruffin. Someone that has a growly voice, someone that has a smoother voice. And in this case, Walter Williams and Eddie LaVert to me were also just one of the greatest one-two punch singers. And the thing was, Eddie is one of the greatest soul singers of all time and has a growl, but Walter Williams has the opposite of Eddie, but it's not a, he didn't go to a soprano all that much, but to me, they're just the greatest one-two punch of soul singers. The star of that song is Anthony Jackson, but I will say the MVP of that song is Joe Tarantino. - Joe Tarantino, so ride with me. First of all, they made this record in the same studio that The Roots recorded their first six albums, which is Sigma Sound Studios in Philadelphia. The first thing I asked Joe Tarantino, owner of Sigma Sound and the engineer of all those Philadelphia classics, what trick did you do where, they sound like they're singing backwards, but it's also, like this is the first time I'm seeing in real time of him like reversing the tape. Like he taught me every trick of the studio that, he ever used in terms of like using reverb and getting a texture and a sound. And one day, one day, we were having trouble working on a song. There's a song called "Dynamite" that J Dilla produced on the "Things Fall Apart" record. ♪ Everybody ♪ ♪ Touch this elephant dynamite ♪ ♪ Touch this elephant dynamite ♪ I wasn't getting the drum sound I wanted. And he says, "I'll be right back." And he walks away and he comes back with a blanket. And the blanket is in air quotes. And I was like, "What is this?" And he's like, "This is for every album "I ever mixed or engineered." He says, "Give me five minutes, I'm gonna hook it up "just like we hooked it up back in the day." So he comes in the studio, and we're in the same studio room, so of course he knows what he's doing. He sets it up and he takes the blanket and he puts it over the drum set. He says, "Now play the drums." And I was like, "But there's a blanket on top of everything." He says, "There you go." I'm thinking like, okay, this is gonna suck, it's gonna sound horrible. And when I went back to listen to it, I was like, "Is this how you got that dry sound "on your drums, like that low drum sound?" And he's like, "Yeah." So the same blanket that was used on "For the Love of Money" is also on the "Dynamite" song for "The Roots," so. Okay, so I asked Todd, Todd Rundgren, did he ever intend for this song to be played at sports arenas? And this is what I-- - He said yes. - No, this is what I realized. He said when your song gets immortalized in a sports arena, it's never by intention. You know, I've gone to many a sports event and everyone will have their version of "Go New York" or something like, they'll try to make a theme and it never resonates. True themes and true anthems have to be chosen by the people. - Yeah. - He is one of the early pioneers of what we would call the bedroom musician. He was a tech head. - Yeah. - So the kind of guy that not only had a talent to write songs and craft songs, but he was also pretty much everything that we take for granted now, where, I mean, I've recorded songs on, you know, my iPhone. - Yeah. - Like I've done stuff on GarageBand straight to my phone that have wound up on records. Basically, Todd was a one-man GarageBand. Like he really innovated and invented a world in which he could record stuff literally in his bedroom. - You can't pin down his style. - He was a creative in terms of just whatever ideas were floating in his head. Sometimes to wondrous, life-changing results, sometimes to the indifference of his fan base, but I admire his bravery. ♪ Lonely night ♪ ♪ I cry my eyes out over you ♪ - One of the greatest things my parents did for me was in addition to just giving me the world of music, they also tricked me into thinking that oldies doo-wop music was new music. You know, there's a part where I take Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers 45 to school and my teachers are laughing at me 'cause they're like, oh, this was out when I was a kid, Amir, and wait, what do you mean oldies? Like, I didn't know what oldies were. And I kind of came home with, like, you guys lied to me. Like, this is old music. So, yeah, I got lied to. - Last one. - Ooh, you know what, I'm gonna let you have this. - Boss gags. - Okay, I know boss gags, but-- - I know you know later boss gags, right? - You're right, you're right. - And then there's just-- - Silk degrees, box gags, or-- - It's just so, it's so random. - I mean, the sign of artistry is where artist starts one place, the origins of artist starts one place and ends up another place. Like, not many people know that Kenny Rogers was a psychedelic artist before he became a country artist. And not many people know that Chubby Checker released, like, an amazing psychedelic record, like, in the late '60s. - Yeah. - Like, in the late '60s. - Yeah. - Long after he tried to make his twist just one more time before we get tired of him. So, I like the journey of an artist, an artist that's allowed to sort of morph and change to who they wanna be. - There was so much more of that in that, like, you know, '60s, '70s, '80s, 'cause the technology was changing, the world was changing, the music was changing, like, so people had to keep, oh, what's the thing? - Like, I know people sort of position me as this, like, this teacher and whatever, but this is what makes a quest love, 'cause what's gonna happen is as soon as I go home, I'm gonna go through Boss Gags' entire history. That way I won't be, but the thing is, you planted the seed, and now I'm gonna investigate pre-Silk Degrees, Boss Gags. - Great to see you. - Love the way you did that. - Thank you. ♪ I never knew a la, la, la, a la like this ♪ ♪ Gotta be something for me to write this ♪ ♪ Queen, I ain't seen you in a ♪