Tag Archives: questlove

Hip-hop has had a contentious relationship with the Grammys, but tonight’s 50th anniversary performance was a much-deserved celebration of the genre. The loaded showcase achieved performance co-curator Questlove’s previously stated goal to span the breadth of hip-hop’s 50 years. The Recording Academy has been criticized in the past for controversial …

Twenty years ago, the AIDS-awareness nonprofit Red Hot unveiled Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti, a tribute record that recruited over three dozen artists in celebration of the Nigerian musician. Now, after two decades, the record has been made available on streaming for the first …

The Oscar-winning Questlove will serve as an executive producer on an upcoming documentary about J Dilla, the hip-hop producer that the Roots drummer previously proclaimed was “the music god that music gods and music experts and music lovers worship.” Dilla Time, made in cooperation with James “J. Dilla” Yancey’s estate, …

Brian Wilson is raking in the 80th birthday wishes from an array of friends and musical peers, including Bob Dylan, Carole King, Elton John, and Questlove. The aforementioned artists — and many others — all sent in short video messages celebrating the musician, who entered his eighth decade today, June …

When a local promoter and New York City Parks department employee named Tony Lawrence first began the Harlem Cultural Festival in 1967, he hardly could have imagined that, 55 years later, his music festival would be recognized by the United States Senate. Yesterday, the Senate agreed by “unanimous consent” on …

Zendaya, Adele, Pete Davidson, and dozens of others have been named in the2022 TIME100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people serving important roles in entertainment, politics, sports, and business, among other fields. The list is sorted into sections of artists, innovators, titans, leaders, icons, and pioneers. This …

Questlove’s Summer of Soul, the Oscar-winning documentary about the long-forgotten Harlem Cultural Festival, has inspired organizers to plan a new fest at the site of that 1969 event. Scheduled for the summer of 2023, the Harlem Festival of Culture will center around a multi-day event at the now-Marcus Garvey Park; …

“It’s a new chapter in my life as a storyteller,” says Questlove, fresh from reinventing the concert movie with Summer of Soul. His directorial debut, which embedded much-needed Black-history lessons inside jaw-dropping, long-buried performances from Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, Nina Simone, B.B. King, and many others, was one of 2021’s …

It was a given that this year’s all-virtual, all-living-room-screenings-all-the-time Sundance was going to seem a little strange. Having experienced a few pandemic-corrective festivals already over the past 10 months, a lot of critics and journalists were already familiar with the drill: log on instead of line up, chat with your …

D ear heavenly Father,” someone is saying to the silent room, “please give us the ability to touch this crowd.” All thirty-six members of D’Angelo‘s touring band and crew are stuffed into his dressing room, hands linked, heads bowed in a large prayer circle. “And when our ability fails, Lord. …