Interlude: Questlove’s Story (Live)

So, like in late 1996, D'Angelo convinces us to take up shop at Electric Lady Studios, in The Village on Eighth and Sixth Avenue, where we don't know it yet, but like, 8 or 9 seminal records will be recorded there from between ‘96 and 2003. So, you know, at the beginning I just thought, “Okay, well, we'll work for like four months, and then your record, Voodoo, will come out in like February 1997.”

Oh, little did I know. So, once this seemed like this is going to be a long project, both James Poyser and I sort of convinced еverybody, to just like, on the off hours, to comе and record at Electric Lady. So, thus Common would take up the B room. Erykah started recording in the C room upstairs, and of course, D'Angelo was in the A room

And so this particular day we were working on Common's Like Water for Chocolate record. [Yeah.] He came in really excited, and said, “I gotta cut early because, you know, I'm gonna start acting.” And this is before, like, I wasn't even a multi-hyphenate yet

Like “Acting? We're rappers. We're supposed to do this.” So, you know, he's excited, like, he had his vest on, and his, you know, special tie, like..the Jeff hat, like, he looked like one of The Lockers. Like, all right, google The Lockers if you were born after 1995 or something. Anyway, so he was, like, hella excited

And I was like, “what you auditioning for?” And he's like, “yo, man”. He's like, you know, Common, talking Chicago. He's like, “yo, man, you know. I'm auditioning to play this detective, and guess who my co-star going to be? Ol’ girl from Destiny's Child.” We didn’t know her name. We was like, “wait. Ol’ girl?” He’s like, “yeah, it's like a hip hop remake of Carmen.”

And, you know, like, we was all excited and everything last out, like, “Oh, yeah, you got it. You got your lines ready and all that stuff?” And he's excited and everything. “All right? Go get ‘em Common. Go.” He's walking out the door and like, “all right, go get ‘em. Go get him.” You know, like the sitcom when, like, something exciting happens and the screen flips and it comes back and it's like the opposite, like dread

So we like “rah rah rah rah. Go get him Comm. Knock that audition out.” And he comes back. All head down. I was like, “how'd it go? You get the--you get the part?” He's like, “yo, man.” He said “Mos was there too, man.”

I said “what?” He's like, “yeah, man. I think that role is going to go to Mos, man. They ain’t going to pick me.” So we had jokes. So literally the entire--for the next three hours we kept clowning him that "Haha, Mos stole your role.” So we all started getting on our instruments and we just started messing around

No, wait wait wait. Just stay and see. So initially we kept playing this because we were doing, UMI Says. “My Umi said shine your light on the world.” Right? But for three hours we just kept being like, ”Ah, he jacked your role. He jacked your--Oh, man, you could have been…You could have won an Oscar. You could have been…Damn, man. And he took your leading lady, from you. Ooh.” So then about three hours into it, it went from UMI Says. And I said, “yo, James, what's ol’ girl song?” So he mean you mean “I don't think you do.” And then we started, “I don’t think you do.”

So for the next three hours, we clowning Common over losing a role to Mos and ol’ girl from Destiny's Child by amalgamating, Umi Says and Bills, Bills, Bills into the same song. He's there and he says, “yo, I kind of like that”. And we were just messing around. So he was like, “no, no, let's do that."

So literally what you know as Sometimes is literally a one take. We didn't even stop the song. We just said “roll the tape”, and you…like we, this is how the story Sometimes happens. So that's the story