The Questlove Show - Questlove Reaches Into The Mailbag & Answers - August 6

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

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, 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.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. When Democrats are messing up, I say it. When Republicans are messing up, I say it. I'm S.E. Cup, a journalist and political commentator. And on my podcast, Off the Cup, I help you make sense of the often nonsensical news. I do this on cable news, too, but on my podcast, I can really let loose and be my honest, unfiltered self. I just want to talk about something that happened this week because it's so bonkers.

So stupid. Such incredibly bad politics. We have to talk about it. Come for the hot takes. Stay for the sanity. Listen to Off the Cup on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Maria Garcia. You may remember me from my podcast, Anything for Selena or My Diebel.

I love pop culture. I think about stuff like, what did Mariah Carey and Luis Miguel's relationship mean? Why was the world so unfair to our girls? Britney Spears. And why do some women yearn for Shakita's black hair to make a comeback? I'm always trying to find the meaning behind pop culture and beyond. And now I'm back to unpack more divas, more drama, more stories from the present and the past that I'm very excited to tell you about. We're going to have fun. We're going to keep it cute. And we're going to figure out what it all means. to MyCultura Podcast Network,

as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. When teenager Joy Morgan discovered the religious group, Israel United in Christ, she believed she'd found the truth. Many believe she found a cult. Then she disappeared.

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All episodes available now to Bench. Listen to The Missing Sister on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Munga Chitigula, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talked to scientists, biopunks, curmudgins, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever and what it means for all of us.

And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. To make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. The Quest Love Show is a production of IHeart Radio. What's going on? This is Cousin Jake, one of the producers of the Quest Love show. We are back here for a mini episode with The Man, the Myth, the legend, Quest Love. Yeah. Man, we've been taping up a storm lately. You know, our dedicated,

readers have been sending in questions. Okay. Encourage everyone. You know, go to Questlove Supreme, the old name of the podcast.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.

But yeah, we got one actually today. So one of our new episodes is with DJ Mugs of Cypress Hill. The Black Sunday comment? No, no. No. No. No, like, no hate. Like, people have been...

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. Oh, the self-titled. But I was telling him that I got hired when Black Sunday was finished. Oh, okay. However, and people were like, I think you meant the debut record. And that was the thing I wanted to make clear that when I'm talking about how my mind was blown,

Han Soul played us, me and Tarek. The 91 album. The 91, the self-titled album. Interesting. It was funny, too. And, you know, there's a couple 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 thank you, by the way, you put up all our animations in your stories the other day.

You just went ham. It's my favorite thing. 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.

Right. 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. That was an amazing episode. It touched on some of your overlapping history back to Ruff House and Studio 4. Here's the question.

And this is from Sinesstat Canal on YouTube. I butchered that. Apologies. DJ Mugs is a legend. I would say he originated the whole psychedelic, dark, cinematic beats, possibly even before Rizza. 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. Yeah, 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 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, you know, my analogy, I always say 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's work. And also my theory of like there's a person that's the pioneer and the person comes right behind and really nails it. So I agree 100% that I do believe that Mugs was the flag planner of a certain type of dusty, dark musical backdrop that later the Rizza came in and totally just, you know, knocked out the part and kind of made his, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I know those guys, especially through like the Soul Assassin's compilations,

there's a lot of overlapping history and just like pure respect. And that's why Wu-Tang members fit so well on. Grandmasters, yeah. Yeah, it fits so well. on those particular albums. And I think, did he not, did he did an album with a Jizzah? Yeah, Grandmasters.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, yeah. 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 9 that was name dropped on phrenology that came out of nowhere. It is wild because I will say this, and you probably don't know this. This album against him first with Justin. All right, go, go ahead. Justin is always messing with QLS.

Shout out to Justin, you know. Really, it's just positioning. What I had Ursula Ruck do. 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 one that did make it, which was Tell Me with DeAngelo, that's one of them. and there were two that didn't make it that feature Tariq Rhyman.

And then there was a fourth song that was based on this breakbeat called Disco Tech Soul. And Disco Tech Soul, hip-hop fans would know this as the drums of Big Daddy Cain's The Rath of Kane. They're a very fast drum break. And it was a little too fast. I was trying to... It's by Ricky Williams? Yeah. And so the deal is like...

like because Tarik is always the emcee in my head when I'm creating stuff. You know, Tarika is kind of primed for speed rap. And, you know, he comes from the Iambic pentameter. Yeah, Cool G rap and the cane. The dun to dun dun dun dun dun dun dun da dun dun da dun da dun like that's his own. 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 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 Buster Rhymes in Slum Village and it's like, if you're making the money and you're making the swing, we do on a thing. Living it up, that's what it's called.

It's called Living It Up. It did make fantastic volume two. So then I hit up Dillon. and I was like, can I take that track back? And I took it back. Tarreek didn't have nothing for it, and we had to turn in for knowledge like in a week. And we were already holding out for a merry 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, at the time when Russell Elavito just got finished with Black. Jackalicious's Blazing Arrow album and the Breathe song

that song at the end with like Zach Gil Roach and Saul Williams with three songs and one 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 that was electric lady that was electric lady so you know Russ has all of his tools

out and everything and like 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 doing that session like, you know, 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 the way that Samuel Jackson did and the do the right thing, roll call. We had, we love radio, love roll call. You know, Gladys Night and the Pips, the Jackson's, Prince, da-da-da-da.

So that's what I wanted her to do. Weird enough, I tried that idea again two years later when Tariga 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 I'll 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 is called Lighters Up by Little Kim. So the Lighters Up thing with the little

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 EgoTrips book of rap list, and it took me like an hour to, like, write down every name that was inside of both of those EgoTrip books. And I just gave it to Ursula Rucker, and she just read one track of, like, A through F, next one, F through da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And Warfield just happened to be the last name on. 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. Because even I thought, like, I wonder if he thinks like that's a dig or a disc, like, and Justin Warfield. But he DMed me.

He was like, hey, why was I? singled out like that. I was just like, your name was last on this, bro. So. I'm Munga shit together and I'm back with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about and what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you and then we can and tests what draw is the best for your brain, as opposed to his brain.

Here's some hard truths. I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five-year acceleration. And get myself into a world of trouble. I'd say probably start bones smashing. That doesn't work. To make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, How to Live Forever on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

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The question is, what remains when the shaking stops? Hi, I'm Gary Valenzano. And on my podcast, Unshaken with Gary V, I sit down with amazing personalities and we talk about the seasons that nearly broke them, the lows that carried them to their highs. Listen to Unshaken with Gary V on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emily Oster. I'm an economist and data expert.

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Ordered. Listen to Wellness Actually on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I feel like there's some good Justin Warfield talk at the end of the Prince Paul classic episode of QLS 2. Season of the Vix. It's still my shit, man. 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. I consider, you know, you know, it's weird. you know it's better than being on anything that Dilla created or even around? 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 Dill at the last minute decides, you know what, we're going to go rogue and do less songs on the playback machine and that.

And I'm going to bring up two MPC 3,000s. And so someone has the complete show on tape. probably house shoes I've seen maybe five minutes of it but I've seen a lot of the sound check and so this is also the time period in which the day before maybe two days before

the okay 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 and during sound check Dilla starts rocking what I would call

the Ohio players interlude which is like I mean really it's Junie Morrison on ecstasy singing and ah ha ha

boom boom boom 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 got to hear that beat again he's like all right I'm going to put it on the new joint. 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. Like, it had to be super weird for it to make it to the finish line. So the first 20 songs were like really good normal shit.

Right. And there's a vision board in place, right? Like, you know what you're trying to do. Well, I didn't know. I'm not saying like, okay, I'm going to take a backseat. But I know if I'm really going to be honest, Stankonia had us a little worried because all we knew is, like, like whatever comes next after stankonia.

You ever like miss a train as it leaves the station and you wait at the platform, you got to wait like eight minutes for the next train to come? So it's almost like if we're on those tracks and we know that a new train is coming to eight minutes and we better run our asses off to the next station to not get hit. After stankonia and we,

and this includes DeAngelo. Like we were so jarred over. the radical rock star change that Stankonia was from Quim and I, that we were basically like, dude, we're almost certain that whatever's going to come after Stankonia is going to 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 fact that a thousand deaths for DeAngelo,

was the immediate reaction of, oh, I better come with it. 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 than, so it's almost like the sluggish and the slowest.

So by that point, you know, I lost like 100 pounds. And so three years of doing that, I was just like, I want to 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 can really rock out and, you know. And I think common also, and this is kind of when him and Erica were making an official. So he's probably privy to some stuff that we weren't. All I know is that, and Dilla was the last one. Dillo was like, you know, because by 2000, I will probably.

say, I think when he were butterflies, or like, something like not in the camp. Yeah. 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 going to 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 because I figure that at the end of the day the people just be like, ah, Amir's a picture. Yeah, but to answer that question, yeah, day one of Electric Circus,

he plays six or seven of the Welcome to Detroit songs. And I don't know, I just consider myself like, oh, I was the first of year that. You had the earliest access. That, to me, is better than, hey, I'm on that. We're going to end on a funny note or a different non-musical note. This is from Allen, 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? The code switch in is real. 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. Come on, can't go outside to play?

Okay, still, you know. And it resulted in like my first fist fight. And my first fist fight was a tie between like, like my hair was unusually. Like there were afros. And then like my hair. was like a lion's mane. Like 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 whatever that monster figure is in Looney Tunes. Oh, yeah, no. Like, or a Muppet. But, you know, like, it's like the orange figure 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, which at the time was working backwards, Zoom, 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 sounds like this. and so I would come up the street and I got made fun up because I would say, hey guys, you know and then every time I go on, people be like, hey guys, how you doing? Straight Frank Oz, yeah. Like, whatever Grover

or Kermit talks like. Yeah. 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 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 on all those records as a result of me not going outside. So I think hanging with Tarique, 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 could show your knees. Like, they didn't know, like, that level of fashion and whatever.

And so, Tarigue was the dude that was just taking me around the way. And I don't know. I'm catching on to you. So I think that's when, like, I really just went heavy on John. It's almost, it just wore off with me. So. Tarik has my favorite Philly accent. What is the origin story of 215?

I mean, I know it's a play on 215. Two one fine or he'll say a pound or 21 pound also. Please, if you have a mailbag question, send it to, like I said, QuestloveSupSupreme.com, DM us on IGY at the QLUS. We answer. We engage all those things. We read it all. And the questions are great. And honestly, these episodes do really well.

And shout out to Open Mike Eagle. He obviously is part of this. Dude. They will actually say I get more feedback from the miniature episodes than from the real joint. which I was like, okay, who knew? So. All right, everyone, until the next time, peace. Questlove's show is a production of Iheart Radio.

When teenager Joy Morgan discovered the religious group, Israel United in Christ, she believed she'd found the truth. Many believe she found a cult. Then she disappeared. The new podcast, The Missing Sister, explores her story, the family she left, and the religious group she found. You know when you get a feed, I'm like, you just, I don't want to be it. I want to get out.

I want to go ahead now. All episodes available now to Bench. Listen to The Missing Sister on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When Democrats are messing up, I say it. When Republicans are messing up, I say it. I'm S.E. Cup, a journalist and political commentator. And on my podcast, Off the Cup,

I help you make sense of the often nonsensical news. I do this on cable news, too, but on my podcast, I can really let loose and be my honest, unfiltered. self. I just want to talk about something that happened this week because it's so bonkers, so stupid. Such incredibly bad politics, we have to talk about it. Come for the hot takes, stay for the sanity. Listen to Off the Cup on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Maria Garcia. You may remember me from my podcast, anything for Selena or My The Bowl. I love pop culture. I think about stuff like, what did Mariah Carey?

and Luis Miguel's relationship mean? Why was the world so unfair to our girl, Britney Spears? And why do some women yearn for Shakita's black hair to make a comeback? I'm always trying to find the meaning behind pop culture and beyond. And now I'm back to unpack more divas, more drama, more stories from the present and the past that I'm very excited to tell you about. We're going to have fun, we're going to keep it cute, and we're going to figure out what it all means.

Listen to Mui Excited with Maria Garcia as part of the My Coutura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Didn't catch the latest Roland Martin unfiltered podcast? Here's what you missed. People wake up and go, oh, damn, wait a moment, hold up. They change all of that.

Yes. It's real. This is a wholesale attack. It is targeting black people in every federal agency. It's raw. White folks have never allowed that reckoning to last more than a decade. Catch Roland Martin's daily commentary on the Black Information Network. And download Roland Martin unfiltered on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an IHart podcast. Guaranteed Human.