?uestlove - Biography
Recognized for his trademark afro, the prolific artist ?uestlove—a.k.a. Questlove, Brother Question and Questo—quadruples as a DJ, producer, fashion consultant and, along with his live hip-hop/neo-soul band The Roots, a drummer for late night television. Over the years he has also become a highly sough-after collaborator for his drumming/percussion, recording with many decorated artists ranging from Erykah Badu, Dilated Peoples, N.E.R.D., Zach De La Rocha, Christina Aguilera and the jazz collective, The Philadelphia Experiment. After gaining recognition for his work with The Roots in the mid-1990s, he’s lent his production skills to many projects, notably on D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Common’s Like Water For Chocolate. He still finds time to write about music for the likes of Esquire magazine, where he won an Esky Music Award best scribe in 2006. As of the early-2000s, ?uestlove has also began releasing mixtape solo albums, beginning with Babies Makin' Babies (2002, Urban Theory), and then in 2006 with the follow-up, Babies Makin’ Babies 2: Misery Strikes Back (BBE), fortifying himself as a DJ specializing in mixtape soul.
Born Ahmir Khalib Thompson in Philadelphia in 1971, his father was Lee Andrews of the well-established doo-wop group, Lee Andrews & the Hearts. Growing up in a musical environment while being raised on the road during his father’s tours, he was already playing drums on stage by seven years old and directing music as a prepubescent. He met Tariq Trotter in 1987—later known has Black Thought with The Roots—in a creative and performing arts class at high school in Philadelphia. At first Thompson dropped beats with his thumbs on the cafeteria table while Tariq threw rhymes over top, and, once joined by Malik B, Josh Abrams (later replaced by Leonard Hubbard) and Scott Storch, formed The Square Roots. With the times changing and chemistry evolving, they became just The Roots in the mid-1990s, releasing a series of albums with an esoteric approach to jazz-inflected hip-hop.
In 1999, the group scored a breakthrough hit record with Things Fall Apart (MCA), which peaked at #4 on the Billboard 200. Said Spin magazine at the time, the album “swelled The Roots clique into a movement-style posse.” The song “You Got Me,” which featured Erykah Badu and a declaratory ?uestlove drum & bass groove, took home a Grammy award the following year in the Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. They would be nominated for five more Grammy’s over the years, and take home a NAACP award in 2007 for “Outstanding Duo or Group,” while being named one of the “twenty greatest live acts in the world” by Rolling Stone.
His success with The Roots opened up many new paths for ?uestlove, and while still performing with the group he also branched out. In 2001, he began a DJ series project, putting together a seductive collection of “baby making” soulful songs called Babies Makin’ Babies. It featured 15 tracks of smooth soul music (much forgotten or brought to new light), with artists such as Minnie Riperton, Bill Withers, Roy Ayes and The Isley Brothers. He would return in 2006 with the antipodes, Babies Makin’ Babies 2: Misery Strikes Back, which was a collection of soulful break-up songs, beginning with the Ohio Players’ “Our Love Has Died” and ending with the Average White Band’s “One Look Over My Shoulder (Is This Really Goodbye?).”
Throughout the aughts, ?uestlove has developed into a renaissance man in pop culture, running the gamut from fashion consultant (he collaborated with Nike on the”1World Air Force 1” show), appearing on television/film (cameos on Chappelle’s Show and the 2006 documentary Before The Music Dies, about the transparent commercialization of music), to producing (Slum Village’s Fantastic, Vol. 2, Al Greene and others) and collaborator (he played drums on Christina Aguilera’s “Loving Me 4 Me” on Stripped and with Fiona Apple on Extraordinary Machine), amidst other ventures.
As of 2009, he and his famed live group The Roots are the house band on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.