Questlove Blocked 3,500 Twitter Followers After Bachmann Blowup

With nearly 1.7 million Twitter followers, Roots drummer Questlove is no stranger to the highs and lows of social media — and how quickly things can get out of control when a celebrity opens up such a direct line of communication to the world at large.

So when controversy erupted over the Roots’ decision to take a musical jab at Michelle Bachmann during her walk-on as a guest on ‘Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,’ Quest took it in stride, ultimately blocking more than 3,500 Twitter followers who responded to the incident by lashing out at him.

He reflected on the media brouhaha during a recent interview with Pitchfork, saying, “I’ve seen some really colorful epithets in the past four days, but ‘n—– f—head ghetto stick’ is probably the one that takes the cake. I’m still trying to get my head around that one.”

Continued Quest, “Blocking 3,500 Tea Party extremists [on Twitter] in a three day period is no fun, especially when you’re a drummer dangerously close to carpal tunnel. In the end, was it worth it? Absolutely not.”

As you probably recall, all the fuss was over the band’s choice of the Fishbone song ‘Lyin’ Ass B—-’ for Bachmann’s walk-on music, and as Quest tells it, the Roots didn’t even give the song much thought. “It wasn’t like a chess move where you have to think 12 steps ahead; you’re just, like, “F—, all right, I’m gonna do it,” in a kamikaze-type way. And I really didn’t think about how it could be perceived as a misogynist swipe — it didn’t hit me until my [Twitter] timeline started showing up that it was seen that way. I was like, “F—, I forgot ‘B—-’ is actually in the title.”

For those angered by the performance, it may have seemed like a firing offense, but thankfully for the band and its fans, everything smoothed itself out in the end. “We were seeing where she was going to go with it because, if you call the right channels, next thing you know advertisers are in the NBC building asking for proper action to be done,” Quest explained. “So we were definitely waiting with bated breath. And then her camp was like, ‘Look, it’s Thanksgiving. Let’s just put all this behind us and call it a day.’”

The Roots’ latest album, ‘undun,’ hits stores next Tuesday (Dec. 6).