Questlove has recalled the time when Prince kicked De La Soul out of their own studio session.
The Roots drummer was a guest on De La’s new Apple Music 1 show Art Official Intelligence Radio with De La Soul where they discussed the recording of the group’s 2000 album Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump.
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While they were recording the song “View,” Quest revealed that Prince dropped by the studio.
“I came in to ‘View’ when we were trying to fix it. You guys had a sample issue with Ode to Billy Joe — the drum break that is on ‘View,'” he explained.
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“We get to the studio and then you and I were greeted by a bunch of security, Secret Service-looking men, and then Clive Davis and Prince walk in. And then the management of Electric Lady lets us know.”
He added: “Prince wanted to play for Clive Davis so we got kicked out of our own session so that Prince could play Clive Davis [his 2001 album] Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic.
“But when I was drumming that line, ‘I may be old school, but I’m not an old fool’ — that’s like my all time favorite line. It’s always the filler that I like.”
Elsewhere in the chat, Questlove stated that he wanted to incorporate aspects of De La Soul within The Roots.
He said: “The funny thing is that the ways that we are the De La Tribute band, if anything, I think the first effort in every Roots song, at least in my mind, is to take all the elements away that would otherwise make us.
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“Because I don’t know how you guys feel when you hear, obviously a song like ‘Mr. Wendal’ comes out or something like that, and you’re like, ‘Okay, that’s clearly I know,’ or whatever.”
He continued: “I know there are people that are influenced by it, but I think often times if it comes too soon, then it’s like, ‘Are they copying us or is that…?’ But for a lot of us, it’s paying homage.
“A big part of our development was taking all the De La that we could out of our music because again, we were a karaoke band on the streets and then had to figure out how to write songs.”
A.O.I. Radio with De La Soul airs Tuesdays and Thursdays on Apple Music 1 at 11 a.m. PT and will run for five episodes. Other guests include Common, Tyler, The Creator and Dave Chappelle.
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In an earlier episode featuring Queen Latifah, Posdnuos and Maseo revealed they were approached to star in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air before Will Smith.
“A lot of people don’t know, yo, the Fresh Prince thing was offered to us,” Pos said. “Russell [Simmons] was like, ‘Yo, y’all need to try out. Go out there.’ We was like, ‘Nah. We do rap and stuff.’ Honestly, we were scared. Seriously, we were scared.”
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“And shit, I could have been Will Smith. I could have got married to Jada! Damn,” he joked.
