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A moonlighting ?uestlove at Popped!

Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson has a night job. No, not the one where he sits behind the drum kit with The Roots on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. That's finished taping before dinner.

Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson has a night job.

No, not the one where he sits behind the drum kit with The Roots on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. That's finished taping before dinner.

On nights and weekends, in New York, Philadelphia, and around the world, the funky drummer assumes another identity: DJ ?uestlove.

It's in this guise that he'll be performing at the Popped! Music Festival in the Liacouras Center at Temple University on the second, more dance-music-oriented night of the fest.

He's on a Saturday night bill headlined by sample-mad technicians Pretty Lights and Girl Talk that also includes Roots rapper Black Thought with his J. Period Mixtape side project, and Caucasian, controversy-seeking female rapper Kreayshawn.

"It's funny, I think this year is the first my DJ activities are about to eclipse my day-job activities," says Thompson, on the phone last week from 30 Rockefeller Center, while getting his hair done before a Fallon show.

"It's like all of a sudden, your hobby has become almost more lucrative that your actual job," he says. "But in the band, I'm sharing a paycheck with eight people."

The Roots 13th CD, Undun, which he describes as "a concept album, like [movie director Quentin] Tarantino with a twist," is planned for November release.

Thompson, 40, deejays using the computer software Serato, while his collection of more than 70,000 pieces of vinyl is stored in Philadelphia. As an 11-year-old, he would put together Motown-heavy cassette mixes for walk-in music at shows by his father, Lee Andrews, of the doo-wop band Lee Andrews & the Hearts.

The producer and bandleader of The Roots got serious about deejaying after the band played with the Beastie Boys in 1994 on the Ill Communication tour.

"Mike D. used to go out into the middle of the stadium in full disguise and deejay," ?uesto recalls. "Right under the noses of his entire fan base. I thought it was so cool. That's where I got the idea."

The Beastie Boys began as hardcore punk band in 1979, and made the transition to hip hop in 1984. Its members include Mike D (Michael Diamond) who plays the drums, MCA (Adam Yauch) who plays the bass, and Ad-Rock (Adam Horovitz) who plays the guitar.

The always-multitasking Thompson also has a passion for food. He is promoting his Korean soul-food dish "The ? Drumstick." He can be followed on Twitter, Questlove's Food (@cook4quest).

"I always wanted to do either cupcakes or a really good 'soul-on-a-roll' food truck," says Thompson, who has an apartment in Manhattan and a house in Philadelphia. (New York magazine recently put him on a list of "most-fashionable New Yorkers," but, he says, "I still live in Philly.")

"There are so many cupcake trucks. I don't think there is an overabundance of Korean drumsticks in Philadelphia, though," he says, adding that Black Thought, a.k.a. Tariq Trotter, is the best chef in The Roots. "So the idea is to bring it to Philly, and then go national. In a perfect world, I would like to have a truck ready for the festival circuit next year, like for Coachella and Lollapalooza."

That way, you could go to a music festival and consume all aspects of the ?uestlove brand: See his band, listen to him deejay - and eat his soul food. - Dan DeLuca