The Questlove Show - Questlove Reaches Into The Mailbag & Answers - March 5

Episode Date: March 5, 2026

This Questlove Show mini “mailbag” episode features Ahmir responding to listener questions about underappreciated (and groundbreaking) Philly Hip-Hop group The Goats, his creative process and wild story behind crafting the music-driven opening montage for the SNL 50 documentary, and a deep-dive on The Jacksons’ This Place Hotel (Heartbreak Hotel), including why he sees Michael Jackson as an early influence on Gangsta Rap themes, and reveals he made his own private mix of The Jacksons' Triumph. You can submit questions by direct messaging on IG and Facebook, or through the contact-us portal at QuestloveSupreme.com. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media.

Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clivert Show on the I-Hard Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode.

Listen to the Sports Slice Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slica Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say, you know, trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel funny,

anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Yeah. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Questlove show is a production of IHeart Radio. All right, y'all. This is letters to the Questlove show. Again, if you have any letters slide into our DMs. First of all, follow QLS on all the socials, please.

And also, subscribe and like on YouTube. That is the fuel to R5. If you like these episodes and whatnot, look, it just takes a second. Please like and subscribe. We're trying to build a nation of informed music

heads here. Yeah, thank you. I like doing this. Give me more questions. All right. All right, this is a fun one from Alon. Hey, QLS team. I'm a long time listener and second time emailer. Uh-oh, we like that. I'm digging the new format with the mailbag especially, because I might get my question seen.

What I want to hear is Brother Quest talk about Phillies, the goats. They were a big deal to my group of skateboard punk rock friends when tricks of the shade came out. They are also massively overlooked group, not just in terms of sound, but a hardcore political hip-hop. I've listened to almost all the QLS episodes and what had happened was season. It seems like a couple of times Amir was about to mention the goats when talking about Philly hip-hop history and interning at Roughhouse, but I haven't heard anything. I want to hear from those who know this underappreciated powerhouse.

I got to tell you, man, when I started that theory that I always had where I said that the pioneer never gets the credit, it's the person that comes after the fact that sort of gets the, pun intended, the glory. This is definitely the case for the goats. Shout to Swayzac and Mad and Odie and all those cats, Chuck Trice and everyone. That summer of 92, when the roots first started, busking on South Street, subsequently, I was also interning at Ruff House Records, putting those tricks of the shade and No Goose No Glory posters in.

And those guys taught me so, so, so much about just everything that I needed to know. Like, we were just, we were literally a band that busked every Saturday and got some, you know, hand me down gigs and, you know, playing various clubs and whatnot. But those guys would often let us, pretty much let us open for them when they did local Philly gigs. some of those guys are on the original on organics. I forgot who's playing keyboards on good music. But yeah, even with common dust, like, yeah, there are many a goat on that first organics album.

You know, it's sad that they never got the kind of accolades that Rage Against Machine had, like all those groups that came after them. that were sort of in that mood, but pretty much like doggy dog, Cypress Hill, all those groups, man.

Not much has been said about the goats, man, and, you know, I absolutely. Mark Boyce, by the way.

Mark Boyce was the keyboard player on good music. Shout out to Mark Boyce. Shout out to E.J. Simpson also. Oh, and Pierce. Also. I can't forget Pierce.

Anyway, but yeah, shout out to just that whole, there was a point in Philly where all those cats like G love special sauce like the the alt filly hip hop army was in effect but i love those guys and also shout out to rcile mills uh also she sang with the goats love roussil next question moves to s nl 50 this is from allen not to be confused with alon and i this is all the same person

you are going to great lengths i don't think it is the 50 years of s nl is an amazing show with over two thousand songs performed how did you decide which performance performances to include. For the opening six-minute montage of mashups, how did you find those tracks that worked so well together? Was it luck, trial and error, or pure science? The quickest story of it is right when we won Sundance, the two wards at Sundance for Summer of Soul. I came to work on a Monday and one of the interns came in and said, hey, Lauren would like to see you on. on 17 and instantly the room got silent. And, you know, when Lauren wants to see you on 17, that's the equivalent of going to the

principal's office and either your life is going to change or you're getting fired. And being as though I got called to that office twice before, I was like, oh man, it's the three strikes law like I try to stall it as much as I could like you know and it's a thing where it's not a jump how high thing but it's like if Lauren wants to see you you kind of got to go up there in the next three minutes and I was trying to stall it like uh okay well I'll be there and uh I got rehearsal to do right like 2 p.m. 4 p.m. So I try to kick him a can down the road and eventually it's like well just come after the show taping. I went up to 17 and it's everything that you've ever imagined. I mean, I've been on 17

before, but 17 is like kind of really just the belly of SNL. And, you know, of course, there's the popcorn machine and Lawrence, world famous for, you know, his love of popcorn and whatnot. I get there. And when I enter

the office, I'm just like, okay, wait, he doesn't seem, like, I'm so over-analized in the situation. Like, he doesn't seem confrontational. Like, if I were to get fired, wouldn't like my manager tell me like you fucking up and he sits me down he's like man i got to tell you uh and he says that he and paul simon watch summer of soul twice and in my head first of all it's just collective

sigh of relief but it was like oh you know what i do for a living because i kind of had the feeling that larn really didn't know that the roots meant something um unless he's just the best uh uh poker player ever so he was like you know, the 50s coming up in 2025 and, you know, four years from now, I would like to give you a shot to do the doc on that. And immediately, without asking my manager, I was like, yes, I'll do it. Of course, you know, the prime reason why I wanted to do it is because I knew that I would finally be given access to every last episode on that show. Even at the Tonight Show, there's like a master drive system in that building that you can watch any NBC archive that you want to.

Old different stroke shows, Flip Wilson shows, anything that's been on NBC, you can go on their computer, type it up, and then instantly watch it. So I spend a lot of lunch hours watching SNL shows, watching rehearsal shows. You know, they do too. They do the actual show and they do a dress rehearsal show. So you get to see different things like run DMC. made a mistake on the live show. So I watched the dress version. The record didn't skip, you know, things like that.

So pretty much I figured out, you know, if you're doing a doc on SNL, you better do it in the rhythm of SNL. And SNL, what is SNL? S&L is a show that I feel most of the highlights are music-based, even if it isn't artist on the show. like, you know, Wayne's World, they sing, uh, buckwheat sings, you know, all the things that you remember. Even with Debbie Downer, like the punchline is, like there's always a musical element. So pretty much John McDonald and I, John McDonald, who is an editor there at 30 Rock,

who's also a musician, we treated it like I was doing a DJ set, which is, and this is how I do DJ. I hear a song, okay, you know, Hungry Like the Wolf by Duran Duran. All right, that's in E minor, but the bridge is in C. And but the end, hungry like the wolf, and it goes to D. So we literally spent a year crafting a CSI, FBI database breaking down of songs. and literally the song's primarily in the key of da-da-da-da-da-da, but there's a bridge that helps you escape that.

So that helps with things like John knew that shares last word of since you've been gone, ends in D, which will leave right to Queen doing do-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-do-do-d-do. So you've got to think, that's how I DJ. I think in terms of rhythmic feng shui and key feng shui. a year into it we gathered about 400 songs and while this is happening my producers are like hey we'd rather just work on the storylines because you know you're not going to clear all this stuff and I was like over my dead body I spent a whole year doing this I'm going to do it so kind of against their wishes I said look let me just make it first and I promise you I'm going to make this happened. And the hard part was once it was done and people were so over-excited, then their attitudes changed, which is basically, okay, let's clear it. I had about three weeks to go hat and hand to my entire phone. Like anybody that I ever met in the last 35 years of my career,

yesterday's intern is now today's CEO. So thank God for that. So that's really how. when Wendy Goldstein told me, whenever you meet an intern, you treat them like a celebrity, treating them like a star, because in 15 years, they're going to remember, man, Questlove was really nice to me.

He signed my drumsticks. He gave my mom a poster. He gave us free tickets. That's the, you know. So when it came to clearing it, you know, some of the hardest things I had to do. Like some of my friends are on Eminem's management team. Some of my, you know,

Well, I'm friends with the Carter's. So, you know, so basically I cleared everything. There's one magic moment I had to take out, and there was a, I wanted kind of a diva moment. If you know, Mariah Carey's ending of Vision of Love, where she sings the last word, oh, oh, oh, oh. And I wanted to owe off. Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Pavarotti,

oh, uh, Aretha Franklin. Like I had a just a crazy song ending thing and because I couldn't, it's not that I couldn't clear Pavarotti, but I physically would have had to gotten on a plane, go to Italy, showed them the clip for them to be like, and it's just a three second clip. It wasn't worth it. So I had to take the poverty part out. But to get, you know, the Roots Buster Rhymes and Bob McFarron and TLC in a mix, that was like, That made up for it.

So when you see that, just know that initially, that's what I wanted there. But, yeah, it was the time of my life. Like, for me, it was just a visit through my childhood. And three weeks, wow. Three weeks to clear everything, yes. Jay wants to know. I know you're a huge Jackson's fan, so I'd love your take on the Jackson's This Place Hotel. It's such an incredible track, but it feels totally slept on.

I want to hear with somebody with your musical expertise, break down how genius it is. I've asked this, I believe, on the Randy Jackson episode, that why didn't you guys lead with Heartbreak Hotel? See, I'm old enough to remember when it was initially called Heartbreak Hotel. And then I guess some five, six years later, Michael's publisher convinced him to change it to this place hotel because of the sort of, sort of what I call lazy paperwork administration mix up between the two songs, like it's easy to get the mixed, and, you know, maybe Elvis would get Michael's money, or maybe Michael would get Elvis's money, so give it a new title. It's such an unimaginative title, This Place Hotel, that, you know, I just,

I try to ignore that part and not let it taint me. But really, there's a... There's a weird obsession I have with Michael Jackson really being the beginning of gangster rap. I know this is going to be a wild, wild take. But I would almost say that 70% of Michael's output with songs are always with about women. that he doesn't trust or that break his heart

or that has him working day and night or try to trapping him to paternity or is gossiping about him or might leave him for the next guy or cop like if you break down thriller like nine songs, nine of the most depressing songs ever like literally song one, betrayal, gossip,

song two, relationship abandonment, Song three is a cop blocking song. Song four, monsters are going to fuck you up. Song five, gangsters are going to fuck you up. Song six, that ain't my baby. Song seven could sort of be seen as existentialism. You know, does God exist or whatever? And eight and nine are also songs in which he's begging for love.

I remember when Heartbreak Hotel came out when I was nine. I used to watch the clock radio You have a clock radio to get up and go to school And it was such a scary Like I know Thriller is campy and scary But Heartbreak Hotel was really so scary to me Because it wasn't over the top Like Thriller is camp

But Heartbreak Hotel just As a 9-year-old it sounded depressing to me And I guess the story that Randy said was that Sony didn't believe in the song. Probably the funniest thing that I found in my research of, and watching Soul Train is, you know,

Don Cornelius is a very colorful way of introducing songs. And the week that this album comes out, he starts by saying, well, you know, cameraman Tony has been begging me and begging me to play, You know, meanwhile, you hear the, like, the intro is, like, long as hell. And so Don just tells this story about, like, after days and days and weeks of begging me, we are finally going to Grant Camer Man 3, Tony's favorite song. This is the Jackson's heartbreak.

Like, literally, like, it's one of the funniest, funniest stories on Soul Train. But, yeah, very depressing song. However, as an album, there's this whole clickbait thing on, On Instagram right now, this guy's posting that Triumph is a better album than off the wall. I believe it's the best Jackson's album. I don't believe it's better than off the wall, only because I do not like the engineering on Triumph.

So for my 45th birthday, someone was gracious enough to send me all the stems, the entire Triumph album, and I've done a way better mix with, louder drums and way better. And extra songs. You guys should actually hear, well, again, more humble bragging. The title cut, which didn't make the record, sounds like the people's court.

No, literally it sounds like the people. Wait, so wait, I just got to play you the people court intro of this song. It sounds like Earthwind and Fire sing a song, but the beginning sounds like the people score it. Listen. Michael Joseph Jackson from Gary, Indiana. Wanted for Shoplifting bubblegum. Questlove shows a production of Iheart Radio.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football, journey or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

This is a place for raw unfilled conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to The Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. a special guest. The director of the NFL's

East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for, to the biggest mistakes franchises make, to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to

miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, for wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Tim Slice of Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your home. Pocas. I got you. What's up, everyone? I'm Ego Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever.

He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.