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Rising Up with The Roots for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
by Troy Rogers
 It's hard to believe that seventeen years have gone by since The Roots burst on to the music scene with "Do You Want More?!!!??!" and their stint in the Lollapalooza tour back in the early 90s. With ten albums under their belt, and a new one on the way, The Roots have been one of the most talented, diverse, evolving, Grammy Award winning and still relevant hip-hop, jazz groups on the music scene. After years of touring, several studio albums, and collaborations with some of the best artists in the music industry, The Roots have shaken up their musical game by accepting a new gig as the house band for the new Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, which hits the post-primetime NBC airwaves on March 2.
Now that Conan O'Brien and E-Street Band drummer Max Weinberg have left the NBC studios in New York for California, Jimmy Fallon and The Roots have been hard at work prepping for their collaborative Late Night debut. When we recently spoke to Jimmy Fallon about Late Night in 2009, the former Saturday Night Live star revealed that he couldn't be happier The Roots chose to accept his invitation.
With Late Night with Jimmy Fallon about to take flight, we hopped on the phone with a few outlets to take part in a conference call with Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter of The Roots to find out how they're adapting to the new Late Night format, who they'd like to jam with on the show, and why they chose to jump into late night television.
THE DEADBOLT: I was speaking with Jimmy last week and he mentioned that you guys asked about getting other people like Herbie Hancock to come and play with you. What other artists are you looking forward to getting?
 AHMIR THOMPSON: As far as sitting in with us: Robert Glassburn, who’s an artist on Bluenote, Spalding, a jazz bassist, and Tal Wilkenfeld plays bass with Jeff Beck. Those are the main three that I’ve been sort of talking about doing this with. But we’re pretty much open to the idea. There are a lot of musicians that we’d like to give exposure to that wouldn’t necessarily get it on a late night television show.
THE DEADBOLT: How much input do you guys actually have on the show?
THOMPSON: [laughs] We run NBC. Yeah, well, all things musical. We still pretty much have some weight on ideas and they respect our ideas, so ...
THE DEADBOLT: Jimmy also mentioned that you guys did a couple of skits. What was that like?
THOMPSON: No different than doing skits on Chappelle Show or anything. It comes with the territory of doing late night television.
Other Conference Call Highlights:
Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson on what made Jimmy Fallon the right gig to take at this point for The Roots:
"It’s a new challenge for us. After being on the road for seventeen years, this is time for another challenge."
Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter on what type of host Jimmy Fallon is going to be:
 "I think Jimmy is going to be of an everyday man’s kind of host, like he’s going to be the sort of host the layman can sort of relate to and accessible - Yeah, I guess accessible. He’s going to be an accessible host."
"?uestlove" on what style of music they’ll be using for the show:
"We pretty much have to master everything. From what we’re known for to rock songs to even some of the comedy bits being more Broadway influenced or cheesy 80s stuff. Probably the advantage that we have is that we’re a walking rolodex of musical styles. So that definitely helps in this situation, because a lot of [the] things we’ll be doing are kind of out of what I think people think we’ll be doing, which is just being a hip-hop group."
Ahmir Thompson on his definition of success:
"I personally don’t have a definition for success simply because in today’s society - You know, you could be Michael Jackson one moment and then the next you could have all of your things being auctioned online for survival. So I don’t think there’s a true definition of a person being content and not working and calling that success, you know? They have a certain amount of wealth or that type of thing. I don’t know. As long as we’re working, that, to me, is success. There’s not too many people [around] from the class of 1992 that got signed when we got signed that [are] still able to make a living in 2009 doing what we’re doing."
Tariq Trotter on success:
"I mean, it has something to do with longevity. Not only being able to remain around on the scene as long as we have, but being able to remain relevant. I mean, the fact that people still care what The Roots is still doing and the fact that we’re able to have a press conference with twenty journalists at this late date in our career about what our next move is, I feel like that is success."
Trotter on what they had to get used to in the new Late Night format:
"We had to get used to actual rehearsing. Seriously, we have never prepped so much for any project that we’ve ever done, including our actual show, which, actually, at the end of the day, will probably make us an even better machine once we return to the stage. But pretty much preparation. We start waking up at 6 - 7 in the morning, pretty much getting at home at midnight, and all of that time is some sort of preparation for the show."
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