The Roots (Band)

Elvis Costello, D'Angelo, Chris Rock Pay Tribute to Prince - Carnegie Hall - 3/7/13

Better Than: Sobbing silently while watching the club performance scene in Purple Rain on your couch for the 25th time this week... not that there's anything wrong with that. The stage was bigger, the venue more prestigious, and the atmosphere gave off a more purple hue. But then this was a Prince ... More >>

'The Music of Prince'

STUDY HALL

Class is in Session with professor Questlove

Homeboy Sandman On His Black Thought Man-Crush

Five years ago, you could find an aspiring rapper named Homeboy Sandman bombarding the subway cars of the 7 train with promotional material claiming that rappers Mos Def, Big Pun, and The Roots' Black Thought considered him the next great rapper. It was a promotional ruse, but one that seems to have ... More >>

Live: The Roots, Living Colour, And Others Pay Tribute To Jimi Hendrix At SummerStage

SummerStage Honors the Music of Jimi Hendrix Central Park SummerStage Tuesday, June 5 Better than: Exercising, which is apparently what you're supposed to be doing in Central Park. Hendrix was really into covers—his live sets were littered with songs by Cream ("Sunshine of Your Love"), Dyla ... More >>

Q&A: Hot Sugar On Associative Music, Working With The Roots, And Sampling A Rat Who Played Keyboard

"There are two pigeons right there, so if I threw some bread and scared them off, I could turn that flutter sound into a Mannie Fresh snare roll." With that, Hot Sugar claps his hands and, as if on command, the two pigeons stop their strut through Tompkins Square Park to flap and flutter off. For a ... More >>

Matzo Balls And Disco Balls: Pairing Great GoogaMooga's Food And Music Offerings

This weekend Prospect Park will host Great GoogaMooga, a festival that brings together some of New York's best restaurants and musicians from New York (disco technicians Escort; bouncy Brooklyn rockers Fort Lean) and outside the city (Saturday's headlined by the hip-hop polyglots The Roots, while Su ... More >>

Questlove's Quest

The always-working bandleader puts the world on shuffle at BAM

Q&A: Questlove On Artistic Freedom, "Shuffle Culture," And Spreading The Springsteen Gospel

In a recent tweet responding to a follower's assertion that he was a celebrity, the drummer and head Root Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson demurred, claiming he was merely "a personality." The follower had a point, though; according to a website devoted to Quest's blogs about meeting famous people, for in ... More >>

A View From The Bench: Bruce Springsteen's Legacy On Wrecking Ball And Jimmy Fallon

You don't expect a legacy artist to still be able to surprise you, to put out music 40 years later that is genuinely interesting and expansive and making a good honest attempt at being relevant. Not in the "Mick Jagger getting his young minions to curate the hottest young live music acts for the Sto ... More >>

12 Tracks, Two And A Half Hours: Sound Of The City's Mixtape Of Long Rap Songs

Last week, the new Gorillaz track "DoYaThing" dropped. It's long—a full 13-minutes and some seconds of music, a lot of which involves Andre 3000 getting frenzied and inspired with that rapping thing he does so well. With "DoYaThing" and persistent talk about Outkast reunion rumors bedazzling u ... More >>

Download: Homeboy Sandman's Interstellar Voyage "The Miracle"

Homeboy Sandman is a spiraling autumn of light from Queens, a rapper whose flow at once sounds like a metaphysical brain drain and a physically fit slice of verbal gymnastics. With a career built on battle competitions, hosting nights at the Nuyorican Poets Café and some guerilla F train flyering, ... More >>

?uestlove

Live: VH1 Brings Out The Divas At The Hammerstein Ballroom

via VH1​VH1 Divas Celebrates Soul Hammerstein Ballroom Sunday, December 18 Better than: Whatever Ryan Seacrest is going to cook up for VH1 Soul. Last night's VH1 Divas taping existed both as a performance and self-contained, 24-hours-out advertising opportunity for its broadcast. (Tonight at ... More >>

The Roots

Live: The Roots Play To The Crowd At Astoria's New Outdoor Venue

​The Roots Studio Square Wednesday, May 4 Better Than: Whatever '90s cover band was playing elsewhere in Astoria. An hour into the Roots' Wednesday night show, located at the Astoria beer garden Studio Square, Black Thought finally got the crowd to sing along. The trouble was, the song the a ... More >>

TROPIC THUNDER

Blues alchemist comes to BK Bowl

Live: The Roots, The Flaming Lips, Michael Stipe, And Patti Smith Dominate Carnegie Hall's Tibet House Benefit

Patti Smith, leading the charge as always. Pic by Tracy Ketcher.​21st-Annual Tibet House U.S. Benefit Concert Starring The Flaming Lips, the Roots, Taj Mahal, Michael Stipe, etc. Carnegie Hall Thursday, March 3 Better Than: "Auld Lang Syne" "Beauty is power -- violence is weak," we are told ... More >>

Here's Das Racist's "All Tan Everything," Earnestly Explained, Line By Line

​Perhaps you are familiar with Rap Genius, a useful interactive site that aims to "discover the meaning of rap lyrics" by painstakingly explaining every single line of various popular tunes -- at press time Lil Wayne's "Hoes & Ladies" is exactly 13 percent explained, with Rick Ross' "Made Men" ... More >>

John Legend & the Roots

Live: The Roots Regale The Teeming Prospect Park Masses With -- And Why Not -- "Sweet Child O' Mine"

​Black Thought greets his (overflowing) public. Photos by Nicole Ankowski, more below.​The Roots and friends Prospect Park Bandshell Sunday, July 11 Welcome to another preposterously well-attended Celebrate Brooklyn! fete, David Byrne-ian in its excess of humanity, thousands upon thousa ... More >>

The Roots' How I Got Over Is Out Tomorrow; A Most Likely Pretty Epic "Roots Jam" Is Set For Highline Ballroom Tonight

Lest you forget, the best house band in Late Night by orders of magnitude (I mean, did you see this?) put out records, too. And so How I Got Over, the first Roots release since they took the Jimmy Fallon job -- "an album of doubts, parables and pep talks," sez the Times -- is out tomorrow (stream ... More >>

The Roots Return, With A Little Help From the Monsters of Folk: "Dear God 2.0"

For a band with such a wonderful sense of the moment, and such a savvy instinct for artistic fellow travelers--be they Jay-Z, the Dirty Projectors, or Ringo Starr--the Roots sure do make crushingly boring singles. This one, which goes in over Monsters of Folk's "Dear God"--perhaps the most randoml ... More >>

Dept of Humiliating Corrections: Washington Post Forced to Acknowledge That Giovanni Ribisi Does Not In Fact Play Bass in the Roots

Ladies and Gentleman, from the same people who brought you the infamous "September 11th was a joke" Public Enemy correction, it's...a new member of the Roots! Specifically, famous actor Giovanni Ribisi on bass! Or not at all! Let's parse.

Download "Come Back Like Spring," A New Track From Cody ChesnuTT (!!!!)

​Many springs have passed since The Headphone Masterpiece, hip-hop soul upstart Cody ChesnuTT's 2002 double-CD debut, which raised quite a stir back in the day, alongside his surprise hit with the Roots, "The Seed (2.0)." Dude has unfortunately laid pretty low since ("Afrobama" excepted.) And ... More >>

Watch Liquid Liquid Perform "Cavern" on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

Liquid Liquid's first ever performance on national television--so, thirty years in the making, pretty much. Way looser and more slithery than your average evening on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon which, given that the Roots tend to be involved, is saying something. Can you spot the rock critic in t ... More >>

Ha, Clipse's "Grindin'", the Roots Remix

Almost definitely not the song the Clipse are going to perform on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon tonight, but here's a web-only type rehearsal take of Pusha and Mal jumping on the song anyway, as assisted by the Roots. Worth it for Questlove and Captain Kirk's falsetto chorus punctuation alone. Love ... More >>

Hey, So the Roots Played With the Dirty Projectors Last Night

"Stillness Is the Move" and and a solo-drenched "No Intention," to be exact, featuring Questlove and couple other members of the Roots crew. It was pandemonium--pretty much as rowdy as the Bowery Ballroom gets. Plus as the man says, David Byrne on "Knotty Pine" for the final encore, which is not a ... More >>

And Now, A Lovely Tuesday Night Out At Greenhouse, APT, And Highline Ballroom, Featuring The Roots, Of Course

Somebody tell Puja how to do this. Greenhouse is one of those places that make us normal folks nervous. While some revel in the exclusivity of red-roped clubs, the thought of waiting in a felt-carpeted line doesn't exactly thrill me--over-glammed Jersey girls, statuesque Chelsea boys, and men with ... More >>

CARIBBEAN COOL

Trinidad dances into the night

Live: The Second Annual Roots Picnic, Featuring Public Enemy, Asher Roth, and a Whole Lot of Excited 16-Year-Olds

Yeah, it was Philly, but so what--SOTC special correspondent Christopher R. Weingarten reports. viaThe Roots, mid-jam The Roots, Public Enemy, Asher Roth, Kid Cudi, TV on the Radio, and More Festival Pier, Philadelphia June 6, 2009 The second annual Roots Picnic, an eclectic fete held on the Illa ... More >>

Anne Hathaway Happily Drowns in a Sea of Love on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

It's almost too awkward to even watch--people who don't know how to play guitar playing guitar usually are--but there's something really endearing and also sort of funny about this clip of (Obies presenter!) Anne Hathaway playing "Sea of Love" on last night's Jimmy Fallon. Conan's debut is the new ... More >>

Why Redman and Method Man Performed on Jimmy Fallon Without the Roots

On Monday night, Method Man and Redman took their Blackout! 2 promotional tour to Jimmy Fallon, an evening that promised to join the rapidly growing pantheon of incredible rap performances on Fallon's show--the Roots backing veterans that went as far back or farther in the game than they did, guy ... More >>

Asher Roth Sticks the Roots with Their First Ever Lousy Fallon Performance

Shades of the Stevie Wonder/Jonas Brothers Grammys debacle here--C'MON STEVIE! SHOW 'EM WHAT YOU GOT STEVIE!, etc. Back when Fallon's show started, we fretted about the eventual reality of the Roots--live rap royalty if there ever was such a thing--being forced to play hypemen for the Soulja Boys ... More >>

The Roots Lonely Island An Excellent Censor: Behold "I'm on a Boat" Live

In the aftermath of the actually quite excellent "Motherlover," the Lonely Planet boys hit another milestone last night: Their first ever live performance, on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, backed by, yes, the Roots, in nautical finery for "I'm on a Boat." The true star of this clip is whoever handl ... More >>

Dave Matthews Band+the Roots

AND STILL THEY RISE

The Roots’ next regeneration awaits

PUT MY ROOTS DOWN

Philly’s finest get the spotlight at the Apollo

Evil Empire Strikes Back

A rap-nostalgia bonanza feels like a rock show and sounds like a resurrection

Pulling Dylan Out by the Roots

An otherwise sleepy tribute gets ambushed by "Machine Gun"

Blood at the Roots

A new label and newfound rage bear strange fruit for hip-hop's everymen

Music

Off Balance

Illadelphians lose their cultural momentum, maybe even tipping in the wrong direction

Ska, Jam, Rock, and Reggae Stars Try to Drop Pressure

All The World

Not Spyro Gyra, just a hip-hop band throwing a world party

Nicebreaker

Time Will Reveal

Roots of Everything

Yazoo's Time Capsule Project

Love Jones

A Bulgar Display