Ahmir Khalib Thompson is the drummer and joint frontman for the hip hop band the Roots. The Roots has been serving as the in-house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since February 17, 2014. Questlove has produced recordings for artists including Elvis Costello, Common, D’Angelo, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Bilal, Jay-Z, Nikka Costa and more recently, Al Green, Amy Winehouse, and John Legend.
About Questlove in brief
Ahmir Khalib Thompson is the drummer and joint frontman for the hip hop band the Roots. The Roots has been serving as the in-house band for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon since February 17, 2014. Questlove has produced recordings for artists including Elvis Costello, Common, D’Angelo, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Bilal, Jay-Z, Nikka Costa, and more recently, Al Green, Amy Winehouse, and John Legend. He is also one of the producers of the cast album of the Broadway musical Hamilton. In December 2017, Questlove learned in part that he was descended in part from Charles and Maggie Lewis, his three times great-grandparents, who had been taken captive in warfare and sold as slaves in the port of Ouidah, Dahomey, to American ship captain William Foster. The couple were among 110 slaves smuggled illegally to Mobile, Alabama, in July 1860 on the Clotilda, the last known slave ship to carry slaves to the United States. Quest love had his DNA tested in 2011 and genealogists researched his family ancestry. His DNA revealed from both of his biological parents that he is of West African descent, specifically the Mende people. Questlove is the only guest to have appeared on Professor Henry Louis Gates’s program to be descended from slaves known by name, ship, and where they came from in Africa.
He was born into a musical family in Philadelphia on January 20, 1971. His father was Arthur Lee Andrews Thompson, from Goldsboro, North Carolina,. A singer, he became known as Lee Andrews and was lead with Lee Andrews & the Hearts, a 1950s doo-wop group. By the age of seven, Thompson began drumming on stage at shows, and by 13, had become a musical director. He attended high school with Boyz II Men, jazz bassist Christian McBride, jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco, and singer Amel Larrieux. After graduating from high school, he took jazz and composition classes at the Settlement Music School. He began performing on South Street in Philadelphia using drums, while Tariq rhymed over his beats and rhythms. The group continued recording two critically acclaimed records in 1995 and 1996. In 1999, the Roots had success with the mainstream success of their song “You Got Me” The band earned the Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for the song The Things Fall Apart, which has since been hailed as a classic.
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This page is based on the article Questlove published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
