Questlove on ‘The Beatles: Get Back’: ‘That’s Hip-Hop!’
“It’s more than me being a filmmaker,” Questlove says in the new episode of Rolling Stone Music Now. “I’m in the business of correcting and restoring history.” His new career launched with last year’s spectacular documentary Summer of Soul — a likely Oscar contender with a soundtrack album dropping this week — and he details the making of the film in the episode.
To hear the entire discussion, press play above, or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Questlove has lined up six or seven other movie projects that may keep him busy through the 2030s, starting with a documentary on the life of Sly Stone. At its core, he says the doc will explore the phenomenon of the “troubled artist. What happens when you try to force a square peg into a circle?… This could explain a lot about how we perceive artists, from Prince to Michael Jackson to [Dave] Chappelle.”
In the in-depth interview, Questlove also discusses his future on The Tonight Show, the state of the next Roots album (they have 700 song ideas and hope to release an LP this year), why the Beatles’ artistic process as shown in Get Back is essentially hip-hop (“What we just watched for those nine hours, that’s hip-hop. That’s them using other songs to spark an idea for another song”), and much more.
Download and subscribe to our weekly podcast, Rolling Stone Music Now, hosted by Brian Hiatt, on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts), and check out three years’ worth of episodes in the archive, including in-depth, career-spanning interviews with Bruce Springsteen, Halsey, Neil Young, Snoop Dogg, Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Rick Ross, Alicia Keys, the National, Ice Cube, Robert Plant, Dua Lipa, Questlove, Killer Mike, Julian Casablancas, Sheryl Crow, Johnny Marr, Scott Weiland, Liam Gallagher, Alice Cooper, Fleetwood Mac, Elvis Costello, John Legend, Donald Fagen, Phil Collins, Justin Townes Earle, Stephen Malkmus, Sebastian Bach, Tom Petty, Eddie Van Halen, Kelly Clarkson, Pete Townshend, Bob Seger, the Zombies, Gary Clark Jr., and many others — plus dozens of episodes featuring genre-spanning discussions, debates, and explainers with Rolling Stone’s critics and reporters. Tune in every Friday at 1 p.m. ET to hear Rolling Stone Music Now broadcast on SiriusXM’s Volume, channel 106.
