On hearing the background, not the melody of a song
"Let's take 'Where Did Our Love Go' by The Supremes. This is a hypothetical example, but, to me, the most important part of that song is the tenor sax part in the background. So while everyone will sing the lead — 'Baby, baby where did our love go' — I'll start singing ... the saxophone part that's buried in the mix somewhere. I have no idea why [it is] that the small nuances of a song are more attractive to me than the actual song. [But] this definitely explains why I have zero pop sensibility."
On being mesmerized by albums on a turntable as a kid
"Baby sitters and my aunts used to say, 'He is the first child to never give us trouble. He doesn't scream; he doesn't even talk. All you have to do is get a stack of records, put them on the turntable and he'll literally just sit there and watch them turn.' After the third or fourth hour of it they may start to wonder and be like, 'OK, does he do anything else, or does he just do that?' Or on my index finger, I would take my dad's records and just spin them on my index finger and watched them twirl. I liked the way the logo looked in rotation."
Related NPR Stories
The Record
D'Angelo And Questlove Bare The Roots Of 'Voodoo'