?uestlove Warned of Occupy Wall Street Police Raid

Questlove

Gilbert Carrasquillo/Getty Images

?uestlove, bandleader of the Roots, was among the first people to alert Occupy Wall Street protestors that police were headed to Zuccotti Park last night in riot gear. In a tweet posted at 11:38 p.m. ET last night, the drummer wrote "Omg, driven down south st near #ows. Somethin bout to go down yo, swear I counted 1000 riot gear cops bout to pull sneak attack #carefulyall"

The tweet reached ?uestlove's 1.76 million followers an hour and 20 minutes before police appeared at the park, busting up the encampment and arresting hundreds of protestors. Since the drummer's tweet was retweeted over a 100 times and carried the #ows hashtag, many at the park had some warning of the raid. Nevertheless, many at the time speculated that ?uestlove had actually seen extras filming a scene for the next Batman movie. Shortly after police descended on the park, ?uestlove tweeted "told yall! trine make me think i was crazy! i knew i saw what i saw."

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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