questlove as a little guy

 courtesy of questlove’s twitter

tried to resist this

BLACK THOUGHT.

heart break (a little)

helping both my dad AND mom pick out an iPad.

earl again

has a melancholy sound, but might be reading into it based on this story.

question

am i going to have to start watching jimmy fallon again?

UPDATE: YES.

have you ever flown to puerto rico

great article in the new yorker about questlove, and the roots, and the genesis of the band (though they don’t talk about malik b), which reminded me of that outkast article from back in the day. a couple great bits:

When he was a young boy, still known as Ahmir, his mother heard him talking to two kids from the neighborhood one day. “It was raining outside, and they were playing in the gutter with little twigs and sticks,” she told me. “I was watching them, and Ahmir said, ‘Have you ever flown to Puerto Rico? Have you ever done so-and-so?’ He’s talking about art and music and jazz, and those two boys, they just look at him and say, ‘What the M.F. are you talking about?'”

He’d made his musical debut almost by accident, two years earlier, when the band’s [his father’s] regular drummer cancelled at the last moment. As it happened, the show that night was an oldies review at Radio City Music Hall, but that wasn’t what worried him. “I’ll tell you why I freaked out,” he told me. “The keyboard player was dating Susan from ‘Sesame Street.’ When I saw her backstage, I was having a heart attack. My mom and dad said, ‘Just calm down. You know the show. Do it!'” He was twelve years old.

They [Ahmir and Tariq] met in the principal’s office in the first week of school. Ahmir had come in to get tokens for the city bus; Tariq was getting suspended–he’d been caught fooling around with a ballet student in the ladies’ room. … The first thing that caught his eye was Ahmir’s jacket: thrift-store denim with a hand-painted peace sign on the back.

a tiny ribbon of damp smoke

two things from this article about junot díaz from the ny times magazine. the intro:

Every writer is cursed or blessed with a unique creative metabolism: the distinctive speed and efficiency with which he or she converts the raw fuel of life into the mystical, dancing blue smoke of art. Junot Díaz’s metabolism is notoriously slow. His fuel just sits there, and sits there, and maybe every once in a while gives off a tiny ribbon of damp smoke, until you start to worry that it all got rained on and ruined — and then, 5 or 10 years later, it suddenly explodes into one of the most mesmerizing fires anyone can remember.

and junot on writing “This Is How You Lose Her”:

It was the only good day I had in this whole book. The thing is, you try your best, and what else you got? You try your best, really, that’s all you can do.

man in the mirror

this song will never not give me shivers, even with weird crowd shots. new resolution to listen to this every morning.

also “shamone” — an homage to mavis staples. !!!!!! fact from the new spike lee documentary, courtesy of this article:

23. Spike [Lee]’s high-pitched MJ impression: He used it while telling the audience what MJ would say about his movie (“I loved it, Spike”) and also while retelling the first time he met the singer. MJ came to his house in Brooklyn, played him HIStory, and said he could direct a short film of any song he wanted. Spike picked “Stranger in Moscow,” and MJ was like, “any song but that one.”

truly, the best

MY FRIENDS

thought i was cool, turns out i’m a fool

posted this on the ballroom blog, too, very little crossover generally, hopefully, but i love how this sounds, so roy orbison-y and old fashioned.