Let’s Revisit Quincy Jones’ Legendary Appearance on Stretch and Bob’s College Hip-Hop Radio Show
Uncle Q showed up faded and took questions from callers, including Q-Tip, on that fateful night in 1996.
“¡Azúcar!” That was the first word out of Quincy Jones’ mouth during his appearance on the June 6, 1996 edition of Stretch Armstrong and Bobbito’s legendary late-night WKCR radio show. He was referencing the Cuban salsera Celia Cruz, for whom “¡Azúcar!” was a signature catchphrase. But in that one utterance he was also broadcasting something more spiritual: That Quincy was the captain, and he was about to drive this shit wonderfully off the rails.
Quincy Jones, who died Sunday at the age of 91, was as brilliant as they come—a musician and producer who, over the span of seven decades, could (and did) work within any genre and turn it into pure magic. No one else in history has collaborated with Ella Fitzgerald and Chaka Khan, with Frank Sinatra and Michael Jackson, with Aretha Franklin and New Order, with Dizzy Gillespie and every pop superstar on Earth circa 1985. You likely know this—Q’s legend is inescapable in American pop music—and you will hear much more about this in the coming days and weeks, as he receives his rightful eulogies. But what I would like to discuss is how freaking funny that man was, also.
It was common for legends, or soon-to-be-legends, to show up on Stretch and Bob in the 1990s—as DJs and hosts, they were the gold standard for hip-hop radio, introducing the New York airwaves to musicians from across the underground that would come to define the overground. But Quincy was on another level. He was 63 years old during this appearance, a man who’d seen it all but was always ravenous for new music—“I’m a perpetual student, man,” he told the hosts. He approached the show with the Uncle Q energy that he would later hone into a science. Also, he was lit.
It starts a bit awkwardly, with our hosts sounding unsure how to approach such a legend. “You from back in the day,” Bobbito observes. “How you feelin’, it’s not too late for you right?”
“Too late for me?” Quincy shoots back. “Too late for you... I’ve been practicing hangin’ for days.”
It goes on like this, with the kind of chaotic chatter and ruthless clowning that defined Stretch and Bob’s show, but with Quincy exhibiting the quickest and sharpest comebacks. They start taking listener calls, and Q-Tip phones in, sounding rather faded, to invite Quincy to the shoot for A Tribe Called Quest’s “1nce Again” video. (He says yes with an ellipses, making it clear he will not be in attendance.) A guy asks for his address to send him a demo. Most callers are incoherent and have no questions for Quincy, but one woman rings in to find out why SWV was replaced by Canadian R&B singer Tamia on his song “Slow Jams.” After explaining the nonsensical label politics around the switch, Quincy signs off: “You’re beautiful. I love you.”
Hearing a musical icon in repose, unbothered and surrounded by a bunch of twenty-something jokesters, is both entertaining and humanizing, a sense of what it might have been like to actually be around the god on a person-to-person level. In 2015, reflecting on the experience, Stretch Armstrong would write:
... Apparently they had been hitting some clubs, ‘cause Q was lit and honestly, seemed to have no clue why he was at a college radio station at 3 in the a.m. with a rag tag crew of delinquents. We opened the phone lines; some funny moments ensued, as did a few that were slightly awkward. But Quincy was a sport and stuck around for the long haul. I saw him a few weeks later at Spy Bar, went up to him and shook his hand and reminded him how we had met, while he looked at me like I was an alien.
When Quincy was promoting his Netflix documentary in 2018, a wider stretch of the world would learn about his sense of humor, thanks to an interview with New York, in which he pivoted from talking about Big Pharma and the Clintons to asking interviewer David Marchese about his astrological sign and implying he knew who killed JFK. (“We shouldn’t talk about this publicly.”) He was funny and humble in that interview, but even when talking about his greatness, there was an element of humility:
What’s something you’ve worked on that should’ve been bigger? What the fuck are you talking about? I’ve never had that problem. They were all big.
He lived, he laughed, he loved. RIP, Quincy Jones.
