Questlove was one of many artists to take to social media following the death of Prince on April 21, tweeting "I can't fucking breathe right now," and "Long Live The King."
Today, he published a personal essay in Rolling Stone about what, specifically, made Prince such a brilliant person and musician. Questlove also wrote about how Prince effected his own trajectory and work ethic:
I don't know. There's so much we all don't know. This is what I do know: Much of my motivation for waking up at 5 a.m. to work — and sometimes going to bed at 5 a.m. after work — came from him. Whenever it seemed like too steep a climb, I reminded myself that Prince did it, so I had to also. It was the only way to achieve that level of greatness (which was, of course, impossible, but that's aspirational thinking for ya). For the last twenty years, whenever I was up at five in the morning, I knew that Prince was up too, somewhere, in a sense sharing a workspace with me. For the last few days, 5 a.m. has felt different. It's just a lonely hour now, a cold time before the sun comes up.
Read the full essay here.