Questlove To Be Featured On ‘What Had Happened Was’ Podcast Starring Open Mike Eagle
Episode one will premiere on October 11 courtesy of Mike’s own Stony Island Audio.
What Had Happened Was, the podcast from polymath Open Mike Eagle, will return for its fourth season, this time around featuring Questlove. Hosted on Mike’s own podcast network Stony Island Audio, new episodes drop weekly starting October 11.
Shop the best of The Roots’ discography on vinyl and more.
For the past three installments of the revelatory podcast series, host and rapper Open Mike Eagle has profiled legendary creators in hip-hop through in-depth interviews discussing their impact and immense catalogs. Previous subjects include DJ Prince Paul (De La Soul, Handsome Boy Modeling School), El-P (Company Flow, Run the Jewels), and most recently A&R/producer Dante Ross, but now the focus will shift to the Oscar and Grammy-winning drummer, DJ, producer, director, culinary entrepreneur, best-selling author and bandleader.
Together, Open Mike Eagle and Questlove will unpack all the stories behind The Roots’ first four albums, his personal rise alongside Black Thought, Dilla, D’Angelo and Jill Scott, and so much more over the course of the upcoming episodes.
Back in August, an op-ed from the rap legend appeared on TIME’s official website, recounting his experience witnessing the historical moment that hip-hop changed forever. In the piece, The Roots drummer recounts the 1995 Source Awards, the moment he believes was hip-hops funeral, before viewing that as a turning point into a new era.
Questlove wrote, “Hip hop was created as a rejection of the opulence of Studio 54 culture, a direct result of Black people historically being edged out from places of social mobility and of consistently being the ‘have nots.’ But by the time the 90s rolled around, hip hop was slowly turning into the very thing that it was once against.”
He added, “Often, Black people hate when rap critics, who are mainly white, are quick to use the term ‘sellout,’ as if Black people aren’t in a constant rat maze of fight or flight all their lives. Because yes, even your art might have to be sacrificed. And that realization, and the hopelessness that followed, was why the Source Awards was one of the most depressing days of my life. I didn’t know if I had a future.”
Listen to the best of The Roots on Apple Music and Spotify.
