Photo: Talisman Photo for Stella Artois
Questlove (Ahmir Thompson) andBlack Thought(Tariq Trotter) are two of the most food-obsessed musicians in the industry, but they weren’t always hitting up restaurant hotspots andcooking on-air withMartha Stewart.
When their band The Roots first got their start in Philadelphia and would travel to New York for gigs, they’d eat standard late-night city fare after shows: bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches from bodegas, diner food and meat from those street carts.
“I used to be the diner food person after midnight because I thought that was the only option,” Questlove tells PEOPLE. “But as I got older and more mature, my tastes got more refined.”
Now, Questlove’s late-night haunts — he usually finishes DJ’ing around 2 a.m. — are decidedly more sophisticated. “My go-to spot would be En Japanese Brasserie,” he says. “There’s a vast array of really, really good Korean cuisine that you can get between 3 and 7 in the morning, between like 29th and 35th street.”
During slightly more standard eating hours, Black Thought frequents some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the city.
Bittersweet Side A (Bitter):
Bittersweet Side B (Sweet):
“F-minor was the chord that spoke to me that could work for both bitter and sweet. It kinda just starts there. You let the track dictate to you what it should be,” Questlove says of conceptualizing the tracks. “When creating the brass track, I used a lot of shakers, I was thinking of New Orleans so in my head, I heard shakers, spices and the sound of onions cooking and that sort of thing. I felt there were a lot of spices and peppers there.”
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“The foundation is percussive, very much in the way that — especially the part that he’s talking about. It’s celebratory,” Black Thought adds. A music video will be released later this month.
source: people.com
