When the Roots return to Australia in January for their first tour in over a decade, it’s likely their audience will feature the now rudimentary mix: in one section, the original heads, expertly versed in the hip-hop group’s jazz-inflected jams; in another, the Jimmy Fallon set. “There’s folks at this point, that’s all they know us as, the house band on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show ,” Tariq Trotter, better known as the band’s emcee Black Thought, says from his home in New Jersey. The Roots’ Black Thought (left) and Questlove.
The hip-hop band is touring Australia for the first time since 2013. For the self-described “Dalai Lama of the mic” – at 53, the picture of hip-hop wisdom, grey beard and all – it’s a welcome development. Miraculous, even.
“We acquired a whole new audience. That’s fun for us. There’s this whole demo that gets to do a deep-dive into what the Roots were before late-night TV.
It’s all win-win.” It was during the Roots’ last tour to Australia, amid the heatwave of 2013, that they cemented their decision to continue on as the house band for Fallon, who at the time was transitioning from Late Night to the primetime institution that is the Tonight Show . “I remember we were still trying to figure out the theme song,” Trotter recalls.
“That whole time in Australia, at every sound check when we arrived at the venues, we would go over what the possible new theme could be for the Tonight Show .” Black Thought, with the.
