Questlove

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

Jesse Thorn

Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Questlove, drummer and bandleader for The Roots joins us on the latest episode. The legend. Lately, he's been working on music documentaries: Sly Lives! and Summer of Soul were both fantastic. He joins us to talk at length about Ladies & Gentlemen... 50 Years of SNL Music. Questlove gets into his early memories of Saturday Night Live as a kid and gets into how he's been involved with the show over the years. We also get into the forthcoming album from The Roots.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from the Kresge Foundation.
0:03.0	Established 100 years ago, the Kresge Foundation works to expand equity and opportunity in cities across America.
0:10.0	A century of impact, a future of opportunity.
0:13.2	More at Kresge.org.
0:16.5	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of Maximum Fun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:36.2	It's Bolzai. I'm Jesse Thorne.
0:38.7	Saturday Night Live just celebrated its 50th year on the air.
0:44.6	It's possibly you heard about it.
0:47.1	To ring it in, they made special episodes, books, big concerts, Super Bowl commercials.
0:55.5	There's probably like a Pepsi S&L 50 edition. I don't know.
1:01.2	And, you know, if you're a fan of Saturday Night Live, go to town, gorge yourself.
1:07.0	But if you're going to check out one thing from that whole historic set of things, SNL 50,
1:13.9	I have a documentary for you.
1:15.6	And it's not about Kevin Nealyn or Gilder Radner or Eddie Murphy or anything.
1:19.9	Not, really.
1:21.2	It isn't even about Lorne Michaels.
1:23.4	It's ladies and gentlemen, 50 years of SNL music.
1:27.4	And the title tells you pretty much everything you need to know.
1:30.8	Saturday Night Live is, I mean, at this point, it's basically the only big network television show where the musical guest gets top billing, at least co-top billing.
1:44.2	And over 50 years, there have been some pretty incredible performances
1:48.9	and some genuinely unforgettable moments.
1:52.2	The director of the documentary is my guest, Amir Questlove Thompson.
	...

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