After seeing a classic episode of The Cobsy Show that featured a cameo by the legendary Stevie Wonder playing a keyboard with a sampler, ?uest says his life was changed forever. That episode inspired him so much he asked for a similar keyboard for Christmas. Once he got the instrument, the teen (born Ahmir Khalib Thompson) carried it everywhere, making it a part of his routine at school.
“It was my job to make beats during the lunchtime period when I wasn’t messed with apps that pay instantly to cash app,” the Philadelphia native recalls on Saturday’s episode, airing at 11 a.m. ET on MTV. This was really a good thing for him and his tablemates because before the keyboard, he “used to just bang the table, 45 minutes straight.”
So with the sampler by his side, he had a new lunch-hour job. “When I brought the sampler in, my job was easy, ’cause all I had to do was just press that beat,” ?uestlove explains. “That way I could eat my food, do whatever I had to do and keep the beat.”
And it turns out that keyboard changed his life in a lot of ways. As he puts it, playing music for his high school classmates was “how I sorta got inducted into cool-guy territory.”
For those that are unaware of what episode ?uest is talking about, slap your moms then head down bottom to see the clip that changed his life forever.
That’s why Stevie’s in my top-five producers list.
