Next up,
we have a conversation
between two incredible artists,
Questlove and Lilly Singh.
Questlove is a five-time
Grammy Award-winning musician,
producer, and he's also
a bestselling author.
He's also the musical director
for The Tonight Show
Starring Jimmy Fallon
with his band, the Roots.
You met Lilly yesterday,
she's an entertainer,
an actress, a producer.
She's a writer,
she's a creator,
and 14 million people love her.
Lilly and Questlove
embody the new creative,
people like all of you
who are multifaceted
and span across
a lot of different
creative disciplines.
They'll be chatting
with Adobe's own Jason Levine.
So please join me in welcoming
Lilly, Questlove, and Jason.
♪
Ahh!
Hello!
-Hello!
-Hello.
This is amazing.
-It's very quiet in here.
-It's super quiet!
We're going to change that.
-Okay.
-Yes!
-(cheering)
-There it is.
Thank you, fantastic!
Wanted to make sure
you were out there, that's all.
Yesterday, y'all cheered
for fonts louder than us.
(laughter)
And undo.
And I respect that.
So, I wanted to really
talk about something
that Ann was just mentioning,
which is actually
about discipline,
and the fact that the two of you
really represent
the modern-day creative.
You have your hands
in so many different things,
whether it's music
or comedy or acting
or Broadway or television
or YouTube.
So it's actually
a two-part question.
The first part is,
how do you--
it's not about
really balance,
but how do you focus
and discipline your energy
when you're working
on so many different things?
That's really the second
part of the question,
but the first thing is,
how do you identify
as a creative?
In other words,
if someone said to me,
"What are you,"
what are you?
Might be hard to answer,
but I would say, like,
"Musician," which,
if anyone heard me sing
that note yesterday...
maybe not.
I tend to play it down,
so I'd just say,
"I do stuff."
Nice, nice.
No, because, you know,
at this rate in my life,
I'm in the...there's
like different stages,
so I'm sort of in
the humblebrag level
of everything I do
just sounds that cool, you know?
So I don't even, like--
I forgot about Hamilton,
-that sort of thing?
-Right, okay, yeah.
So, I mean, at this rate,
I just...
I'm at a very lucky place
in my life where,
when I talk about
literally having 19 jobs,
I'm just really interested
in working on the things
that I am passionate about.
And the one advice
I always give to people is,
if you're willing to wake up
at 4:00 a.m. for it
and go to sleep
at 3:59 a.m. for it,
then that's
your life's mission,
and I just happen to have
about 19 of those.
Nice, real nice.
Sweet, that's awesome.
I always say the same thing:
If you forget to eat,
that's my thing.
I wish I could
forget to eat.
(laughter)
For me, my job
is still really confusing
to a lot of people.
I've been called influencer,
digital creator, YouTuber.
I had to kind of figure out
what to call myself as well,
because I used to travel a lot
from Toronto to L.A.,
and that's when I had
to define what I do,
because I would cross Customs
every single time.
They'd go, "What do you do?"
and I'm like,
"Oh, this question!"
So first, I would say YouTube.
And then they'd be like,
"Oh, so you're
the CEO of YouTube."
I'm like, "No!
I'm not the CEO of YouTube!"
You might as well be.
You're so sweet!
-I like you, good guy.
-Aww, so much love.
And then I would say,
"I'm a comedian."
Then it's like,
"Okay, tell me a joke."
Okay, I'm just going
to say "entertainer."
But then people
look at me strangely
because I think
they assume stripper?
Which is--
nothing's wrong with that,
nothing's wrong with that,
but I just got that energy,
the person would always
be like, "What?"
So I'm like, "Listen,
I'm a digital creator,"
that's what I say.
I prefer "entertainer"
because, you know,
I like writing,
I like acting,
I like performing music,
I like public speaking,
I like all that stuff.
-So I like "entertainer."
-Awesome.
-Yeah.
-Well, okay.
So along those lines too
and sort of working through
all of these
different disciplines,
something that I think
everyone in here
can identify with
is really that...
that moment of sort of
creative roadblock,
getting stuck.
And Questlove, I mean,
you're the bandleader
on The Tonight Show.
You have to play every day,
you tape every day.
You have to be on.
-You're the timekeeper.
-Yeah.
You can't--you're sick,
you don't feel it,
some days you're hot,
some days you're not,
doesn't matter,
you've got to be in the pocket.
How do you stay
in the pocket every day?
Figuratively speaking.
Well, I'm also in the--
I hate saying
the word "25th."
You know, I wasn't always
this disciplined.
Having entered show business
at the age of five,
working for my dad,
who was--
he was like a notable
famous doo-wop singer
back in the '50s,
so growing up
in the family show
after seeing this
all my childhood...
which basically means,
"I just fined you $20
for that drum roll."
You learn discipline quickly.
But as far as staying focused,
no one comes into the gate,
you know, uber-disciplined.
That takes nurturing, and...
Is it always perfect?
Does it matter?
Again, you're collaborating
with others,
you're with a band
of people, so...
Well, it's weird,
because I'm known for
my very strict,
color-within-the-lines
disciplined drumming.
That's, like, my reputation.
"Is that a computer or
is that a real human being?"
Playing against samples
and everything else
without dropping a beat.
But then,
I'll say around 2000,
working with D'Angelo,
he sort of took me out of that
and really wanted me to--
literally, he was like,
"I want you to play
like a drunk six-year-old."
And I was like, well,
number one, that's illegal.
(laughter)
Bad reference.
But that's the thing.
He wanted me to play
like I was 10 years old,
like an amateur.
Because he said that it had
more human elements
and human quality to it.
So I had to spend
like a year
unlearning all the discipline
that my father,
as the world's
hardest bandleader,
the guy that fines you
20 bucks for a fill...
-That's right, that's right.
-...that sort of thing,
I had to unlearn
that stuff, so...
And I think
that actually makes sense,
because I went to music school,
many people went
to design school, art school.
You learn all these rules.
Fortunately--at some point,
you start breaking them.
Which kind of leads me
to you, Lilly,
which is, again,
making videos, YouTube.
You've got to make them
every day.
You may not feel like
making them every day.
And if you don't put them out,
frequently,
viewership goes down,
we know--
we love that algorithm now.
-God bless the algorithm.
-That's right,
I mean,
that's just a reality
of that world.
So, "I'm sick,
I don't want to do it."
How do you bring yourself
to do it?
How do you get
that fuel back and just...
I mean, I started
making videos in 2010.
And when I started in 2010,
it was still very fresh,
it was very exciting.
I was still learning
how to edit and how to shoot
and comedic timing
and all those things.
And so, I was super inspired,
very motivated all the time.
I'm still very motivated,
but the reality
of the situation is,
humans get used to things,
right?
So if you do a lot of anything,
eventually, you're going
to be like, "Aw,
even though I really
like this thing,
I've done so much of it.
So I'm struggling to wake up
with that same motivation,
that same energy."
So I'm a big believer
of scheduling inspiration,
actually.
I proactively
go out of my way
to consume
a lot of creative content.
So if I'm feeling like,
"I'm having a really hard time
writing a script
or coming up with a video idea,"
I watch a bunch of movies,
I go to see some musicals,
I go to a theater,
I just try to consume
as much content as possible,
just to kind of
spark some light-bulbs
in my brain again,
and I proactively--
And you block out this time.
Yeah, it's not just passively
where I'm like,
"Okay, today,
if someone says something cool
and I'm like,
'That's a cool idea.'"
I'm like, "No,
today I'm going out
and I'm getting inspired
by something today."
Creative pruning.
Oftentimes,
when I don't have an idea,
I do challenges.
So the good thing
about shuffle culture,
with streaming services,
is, you know, there's
three million songs
you can discover.
So oftentimes,
I will just shuffle
a random playlist.
I'll play songs backwards.
I'll pick a book
and just pick a middle word
and try to figure out
how to build upon that idea, so.
It's way easier now
than it was
before the information age.
But it's also harder too,
because I feel like
the information age
has numbed us to--
I feel like the most important
part of creativity is boredom,
and that's the one thing
I stress to anybody
that's in the creative world.
You have to allow yourself
to have silence
so you can hear the ideas,
to be bored.
So I recommend at least
two days out of the month
where you just
spend that Saturday
in your pajamas,
no iPhone, no checking your,
just--
It sounds lovely.
Yeah, let boredom hit you
so that inspiration can come in.
I love this idea
of the shuffle culture,
because you're right.
The concept of doing anything
uninterrupted these days is...
it's not foreign,
but it's hard.
It's hard, right,
it's just difficult.
And that applies
to watching a video quickly.
Five seconds of this,
ten seconds of that,
right, and it clouds everything,
so you need to sort of
free that space
so that you can recharge
and reprogram.
All right. Well, you know,
something that's
really close to me
and I know for both of you
is this concept
of mentors and mentorship,
and I've talked about it
on a lot of
our Adobe live streams
that we do,
and I was going to share this
with you today.
My very first mentor,
I'll never forget,
Mrs. Elaine Benedict.
Mrs. B., if you're out there
somewhere.
First grade,
inspired me to play piano,
inspired me to learn music,
to do all of these
kinds of things,
and she was just
this incredible woman,
and she just--it was just
the way that she spoke,
the way that
she approached everything.
And there was no failure,
because as long
as you were out there
and just doing it
and in it,
she made you think
it was possible.
So to both of you--
and I know, Questlove,
in your book,
Creative Quest,
the dedication
is to your father,
whom you would say
is your first mentor.
Yeah.
So what are your thoughts
on mentors that you've had
and mentoring others?
Because you're icons
for the culture.
It's kind of weird,
because especially in hip hop,
being grandfathered in
or sort of like
having a bigger artist
introduce you
is sort of--nepotism
is the name of the game.
And the Roots
actually entered the game
without an actual--
there wasn't a Lil Wayne
to bring us in,
or we weren't part of
the Native Tongues collective.
But I will say
that of all the people--
and there have been millions,
my manager, Richard Nichols,
my father.
But I'll say that probably
James J Dilla Yancey, who...
there are musicians' musicians,
but then there's
musicians' musicians' musicians,
like the musician
that inspires
the musicians' musician.
That was a lot of musicians.
A lot of musicians, yes.
And I'll say with him,
he really taught me
how to absorb music,
as opposed to listening.
Because again,
in hip hop,
hip hop producers tend to--
they'll buy
massive record collections.
They'll choose a day
where they gather 500 records.
Right, and just
listen straight--
Come home and then
they'll just put it on 45
and listen, listen, listen
and get nothing,
and he had--
he literally treated--
besides Pharrell Williams,
J Dilla was
the only person I knew
that treated his craft
like it was a job.
He got up
at seven in the morning,
very disciplined.
He would clean the house,
listen to these
29-minute free jazz songs
just for that 3-second bit
at the 12th minute of the song,
and then inspiration hits him,
so...
He taught me that
you still have to love music.
Because once you get
into your craft,
sometimes you're not
a fan anymore.
You're an artist,
and the people
you look up to
are now your peers
and not, you know,
gods that you worship.
So he taught me
to really still enjoy music
while swimming with sharks.
Right, yeah.
And, Lilly,
I mean, for you,
I'm curious sort of the mentors
that have affected your life,
but also, you are to many,
especially very young
up-and-coming--
not even just YouTube culture
but just young people
in general.
They see you as someone, yes,
who's done it
and is doing it all
and has a very, at times,
self-deprecating
attitude about it, right?
Not afraid to be goofy,
not afraid to really show
that you're human.
How does that responsibility
sort of affect you
and what are your thoughts
about that?
Well, first off,
in terms of my mentors,
who I am personally
I have to say
comes a lot from my mom,
and I know that's
a very common answer.
But it's true, my mom
has that immigrant hustle
that is instilled in me,
that do-or-die,
you have no choice,
make this happen,
that's very much still
embedded into my work ethic.
From a professional standpoint,
this is going to be day two of
me talking about Dwayne Johnson
on the Adobe stage.
But my career,
I really try to model.
I think Dwayne is
the perfect example of
breaking barriers
and not following a path
and creating your own.
And the best advice
he ever gave me was,
when I was--
I'm still a YouTube person,
but I was like, "I really
want to do movies
and produce things,
but people just keep saying,
'You do YouTube,
you're the YouTube girl.'"
Obviously now, the worlds
are kind of merging,
but he said to me,
"You know, when I was wrestling,
everyone said,
'You can't act.'
Like, 'You are a wrestler,
that is what you do.'"
And then he started acting
in movies.
Then, when he was a movie star,
he wanted to have a TV show,
Ballers.
And everyone was like,
"You don't go from movies to TV,
you just don't do that."
And he just taught me
that you have to buck tradition.
You can't follow these paths
that people have laid out
because everyone else in the
past has done it this way.
If you want to be the girl
that goes from YouTube
to movies back to YouTube
and does all the things,
then you will be that person,
because you will create
that path.
So that was really, really
strong advice for me,
because we often get
labeled and categorized
in my industry as,
"You get a lot of views,
you're going to be
the person that gets views.
We don't necessarily want
your creative input.
We want your views,"
so that was
really important for me.
And it is back
to that same concept,
which is breaking the rules...
-A hundred percent, yeah.
-...breaking those norms
and everything, which kind of
leads me directly to you
and to this next question,
which is kind of about
the importance of
just creativity in general
for the masses
and creative self-expression.
Now, the fact that
we have kind of--
and we at Adobe
are partially responsible
for sort of democratizing
video creation for everyone,
especially with
the announcement yesterday
of Adobe Premiere Rush.
Now that everyone
can really do that,
I mean, it's wonderful
to be able
to express yourselves,
and everyone should
and everyone can
and everyone does...
Does it mean the same?
In other words,
everyone can do this, so...
and a lot of times,
it's modeled after others.
But self-expression
should be you
expressing yourself,
not you
how you think you should be.
And I imagine
you kind of encounter this.
Right.
I mean, I think for everyone,
it's definitely a journey.
When I first started
making videos,
my first video was bad.
It's super awkward--
the first couple videos I did
are still up,
and you will see--
the very first one is not.
-Put it back up.
-Put it back up!
It's not because I'm awkward,
it's because I don't believe
what I'm saying
in that video anymore.
But the second and third one
are just as awkward,
I promise you.
I'm like standing
super awkwardly
and trying to talk in a way
that I don't usually talk,
and I'm trying to sound
smarter and cooler
than I actually am
in the video,
it's just a strange thing
to watch.
But for me,
it was definitely
a journey that I had
to go through
to get to where I am today.
Today, when I'm on camera,
I'm talking about my pimple,
I'm talking about being bloated,
I'm like,
"This is how I feel.
This person dumped me,
I'm all over the place,"
because I know that people
just want to connect
with authentic stories
and authentic people.
And so, I do think
it's a journey
everyone goes through,
where you go through
this awkward phase of like,
"I'm telling my story,
but like a filtered version
of my story,
because I want people
to accept me."
But then you realize
that true acceptance
is actually when you start
being authentic.
And that's it, right?
It's all about authenticity,
and Questlove, you were
saying that before too,
it's that original,
authentic,
starting something different,
and picking out
from your influence
these little things
that you can build
into something bigger.
It's absolutely necessary.
I mean, for me,
it's also kind of
a form of therapy.
You know, it gives release
and, you know,
I'll say that probably
the last five times
that I was bawling, crying,
is usually behind a drum set,
so.
But playing music
and doing my art
can somehow offer
a form of release that
not many people get
that particular outlet
to express themselves.
So I'm one
of the lucky few.
Do you ever see a time where
you wouldn't want to play,
wouldn't want to be
in front of a camera.
I actually encourage that.
Sometimes,
you should walk away
just so that you could miss it.
Right, to come back to it.
Yeah, a lot of times,
especially when my last book
was out about food,
everyone was thrown off,
like, "Wait.
Why are you writing
about food?"
And I was like, "No,
I'm writing about creativity,
but I wanted to talk
about chefs that are creative."
And there was a period
where my mentor had passed away
and I sort of felt like
I was in the passenger seat
without a driver,
so to speak.
So I used the last four years
to explore other things
that I otherwise--
I left my comfort zone
just so that
I can come back to music
hungrier and with fresh ideas.
Tabula rasa, clean slate.
Yeah, I encourage people
to also--you know,
if you're in filmmaking,
maybe take up art.
You know,
Joni Mitchell took up art.
Take up art
or take up cooking
or take up another form
of creativity
so that you can
come back to it.
Awesome.
I could not agree more
with everything you just said,
and then, the second thing
I'm going to say is,
I absolutely do not listen
to anything you just said.
I'm the biggest hypocrite
in this way, because
the YouTube machine and
the digital world in general,
it's very dependent on you
constantly pumping out stuff,
like you mentioned.
"You've got to keep
putting out videos
or you're going to be
taken out of the algorithm
and people are going to start
watching something else."
So I put out
eight videos a week.
Two on my main channel,
six on my blog channel,
it's a lot of content.
What I do--
I mean, what I should do
is follow the advice
you just said,
but my negotiation advice is,
I try to mix up
what type of content I'm doing.
So if I'm doing
a lot of comedic sketches
and I find myself
burning out a little bit
in terms of writing jokes
and writing scripts,
I go, "Okay, I'm going to do
something musical for a while,
focus on this, use a different
muscle in my brain."
Then same thing
with when I wrote my book.
I'm now going
to write long form,
use a different muscle
in my brain,
and that way, when I return
to those other formats,
I kind of feel
a little fresher.
That's the less good advice
than this piece of advice.
So this is less good,
this is very good.
-Oh, no, no, no, no.
-You choose.
Al right, so finally,
because we're at the end
of our time together...
-No!
-Yes, I know.
Yes, I know.
I understand that the two of you
are really--
this is just the beginning
of how you're gonna be working
with Adobe, and I thought
maybe you could tell us
a bit more of what
you both have in the works.
Sure, yeah, I mean, as I
mentioned yesterday on stage,
I'm partnering with
the Adobe Rush team,
which is very exciting.
But we're also partnering
with the Adobe 1324 Project.
So I'm gonna have the chance
to be a mentor,
especially in association
with my Girl Love
Social Good Campaign.
So, I'm excited to check out
some creators,
and hopefully offer them
some good mentorship.
-Yes!
-I don't want to be the guy
that complains about
the state of music
and the state of art,
and how it was back in my day.
So, I feel as though
my contribution is--
I'm partnering with Adam Sandow,
and we are forming something
called Creative House,
which will be a place--
we're gonna launch it in 2019,
and through Adobe,
do various projects,
gather all the creatives,
all the inventors,
the innovators,
and we'll have various projects,
and also through Project 1324.
I believe right now
we just announced
one of our first challenges.
So we'll do various challenges
to engage them
-and their creativity.
-That's amazing.
Well, Lilly, Questlove,
you know,
it's often been said
that three is a magic number,
and I think being here,
this three, this combo together,
this has been
a magical moment for me,
and a truly magical moment
having the two of you
here at Adobe MAX,
we're incredibly grateful.
-Lilly Singh and Questlove.
-And fantastic moderator.
Thank you so much, thank you,
thank you, thank you, thank you.
