Questlove: When we first started, because we were so close to New York City, and I knew that in order for us to really get some attention, that not only would we have to be just as good as the people that we were emulating and that we looked up to, but we kind of had to be even better than them because of the fact that Philadelphia really didn’t have a reputation to hold on its own. And then on top of that, we even had to be better than that because a lot of the hip-hop police and naysayers kind of looked down on the fact that we were a band, like, “You’re not even from the hip-hop aesthetics of two turn tables and a microphone, you’re just a band.” So, you know, we wanted to be four times as good.
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NS: What got you to the drums?
QL: To hear my mother say it, my father was a singer, it was a very artistic, you know, post-civil rights bohemian looking family. My birth doctor, he was also a child psychologist. So he basically told them, “I’m really curious to see if he has the same sort of entertainment DNA that you two have.” And he says, “Well, whatever you do, don’t ever stifle his creativity. If he wants to to bang on the table, let him bang on the table. If he wants to play in his food and make a mountain out of the string beans, let him do that. If he wants to draw on the walls, let him find his creative spirit.” And you know, the thing is, in most inner-city households, you start beating up on the table, you’re gonna get in trouble. But by the time I was intuitive enough to get the pots and the pans and the spoons and just start banging on them, they got me my first quasi-drum set when I was two years old. There was hardly any TV in the house from my birth to fourteen. But my father had a record collection to die for. So I spent a lot of my time just listening to records.
NS: As an ensemble you have commented on your hometown in a very serious way.
QL: Absolutely. We insist on it.
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QL: You know, it’s really weird that Philly really doesn’t have the shadow or the connotation that other musical cities like Nashville or New Orleans has. But Philadelphia is extremely, extremely rich in its musical culture. Not many people know of the jazz history we have beyond in the city. You know, and the history continues. And even down to hip-hop, Philadelphia took the art form of scratching records to a whole other level.
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NS: What do you think is the relationship between hip-hop and jazz?
QL: Both have their beginnings as sort of a subculture to a society that rejected them. Jazz has its own dance culture; hip-hop has its own dance culture, fashion, art, and photography, the lingo–I mean there’s parallels all over. So it started as a subculture and sort of like the devil’s music and what your parents warned you about. And now when they both turned thirty of forty years old, it became your parents’ music.
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