Questlove, Whose Oscar Win Was Overshadowed by The Slap, Talks About Protecting ‘Special Moment for Someone’ While Presenting Grammy

Photo by Rich Fury/Getty Images for The Recording Academy.

When Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson won his first Oscar last weekend, the Best Documentary Feature award for his directorial debut Summer of Soul, his moment in the spotlight was overshadowed by Will Smith’s über-viral slap across presenter Chris Rock’s face. So when the drummer and joint frontman for the Roots took the stage at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards Sunday in Las Vegas, he made sure to mention about how winning an award like this is a “special moment for someone” — and also joked that everyone needed to stay 500 feet away from him.

“All right, I’m gonna present this award,” he began, “and I trust that you people will stay 500 feet away from me.”

“Just playing,” he said with a smile as the crowd laughed.

Questlove then brought up the infamous incident from the previous weekend.

“They say, you know, it’s better to give than receive, and I’m not so sure about that because last Sunday, of course, you know, it felt pretty good to receive, you know, an award.”

He paused for a moment as the crowd cheered for him. “But I will say that it’s also great to win a Grammy Award for this — from this particular Academy. And you know this for 22 years, you know, The Roots won our first award and you know, it’s exciting as if it were the first time and you never forget your first time.”

The Roots have been nominated for 14 Grammys, winning three: Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group in 2000, and in 2011 they took home awards for both Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Album.

“You know, this is now a special moment for someone,” Questlove continued. “And we’re going to make a memory for them tonight. And these are the outstanding nominations for Song of the Year.”

The award went to Silk Sonic, the Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak duo, for “Leave the Door Open.” They faced strong competition from a number of mega-popular tunes, including Justin Bieber’s “Peaches,” “Happier Than Ever” by Billie Eilish,” and Olivia Rodrigo’s smash debut “Driver’s License.” Rodrigo would go on to win Best New Artist a few minutes later.

Mars and .Paak were joined on stage by D’Mile, who co-wrote the winning song with Brody Brown.

D’Mile thanked his team, family, and his “beautiful wife out there,” and dedicated the win to his mother, who had just passed away on Wednesday.

Mars told his musical collaborators that he loved them and wanted to “thank everybody that helped us with this album.”

“Because of you guys,” Mars said to the cheering audience, “we’re going to be singing this song forever.”

“For the rest of our lives!” .Paak agreed. “We love you!”

Watch the video above, via CBS.

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