Questlove missed Will Smith’s Chris Rock slap because he was meditating

completemusicupdate.com:

Everyone has an opinion on Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Everyone. Every single person. Even your mum. Well, everyone except Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson that is, despite him accepting an award just after the headline grabbing incident at Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony took place.

He missed the whole thing because he was meditating at the time.Just in case you also happened to have your eyes closed on Sunday night and Monday morning (and have kept them closed for the rest of the week), Smith got up on stage and slapped Rock after he made a joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s shaved head.Rock was actually on stage to present the award for Best Documentary, which went to Questlove’s film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, ‘Summer Of Soul (…Or The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)’.

Given the timing, you’d think this would be the moment of the proceedings to which Questlove would be paying closest attention, but no.“I really wasn’t aware of that”, he told Jimmy Fallon on ‘The Tonight Show’. “It’s really weird to say because… they tell you ahead of time, this is your category, and so, in that moment, you’re either going to be full of anxiety or, for me, I’ve been meditating for the past two years – I do [transcendental meditation]”.“When the commercial break happened, I was in my ‘Mmmm mmm’”, he added. “So when I opened my eyes, I didn’t realise.