There’s a good chance that Questlove has perhaps never been as busy. He certainly has his hands full these days between work on the Roots Picnic festival, preparation for his work at The Tonight Show, managing his publishing house AUWA, along with his numerous movie projects. However, the workload for this gifted musician has been reduced. As per his recent calculations, he has held roughly 19 positions from 2015-2017, including a professor of music at NYU, as he laughingly reveals in an interview, saying that it made good press. However, the situation was a bit different with girlfriends.
Questlove On The New Perspective The Pandemic Gave Him
He said that they would often threaten to end their relationship if he accepted the job at NYU. He further explains that he believed that he had to accept every job that he was offered since as a child he had to sustain himself a week to week, surviving on odd jobs. The pandemic, however, presented him with a fresh outlook. Questlove says that it was during the 2020 pandemic that the universe asked him to pause and look closer into his heart. Adding that this was how he developed his present mentality of doing only what excited him.
In addition to finishing Summer of Soul, which is a documentary on the Harlem Festival of 1969, he also authored The Rhythm of Time during the lockdown. As a result of the movie, he got more attention and stopped hiding and feeling shy, after winning the Oscar in 2022 for Best Documentary. Whether he’s addressing class disparities in a projected live-action version of Disney’s Aristocats or addiction in his upcoming documentary about singer Sly Stone, Questlove wants every project he works on right now to have a “teachable lesson.”
The entertainer claims he’s also thinking about taking a real hiatus, surprising even himself. However, he observes that day probably won’t arrive until 2027, following the completion of those two movies and four more.
