The Roots Quotes

I definitely enjoy performing on stage with The Roots.

When I'm creating a song, I'm thinking of a hip-hop beat playing on a live drum set - kinda like the Roots would do. I will put New Orleans music on top of that with some other rhythms.

Although there are people who regard 'Do You Want More?!!!??!' as our first major release, I think 'Things Fall Apart' was the real arrival of The Roots, so to speak.

Whenever I watch the beginning of Jimmy Fallon, I feel like I should sue the Roots for bait and switch.

I think all of this—The Roots and DJing included—was meant to prepare me for The Tonight Show.

When I was in college, the Roots, the sui generis ensemble from Philadelphia encompassing all manner of black music, played a show on campus.

Everybody nowadays rhymes, but out of the people that really, really do it well, it's still a small community of artists. We all tend to be in the same circles - people like my Wu-Tang brothers, or Black Thought from The Roots.

When I started picking out music for myself, I was a hip-hop kid. DMX, The Roots, Outkast, people like that.

As scary as it is, we have to admit that there are folks in the world who only know the Roots as 'the band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.''

To get the adrenaline pumping between events - or to help me switch off, Jay Z, the Roots and Drake are on my playlist.

There probably won't be an animated The Roots or Black Thought as there was, say, an animated Michael Jackson when 'The Jackson 5' cartoon show was on when we were kids.

Passyunk Productions is our film & tv production company. The name comes from a street in Philly, Passyunk Avenue, where the concept of The Roots was born, as Ahmir and I started out busking on the corner of 5th & Passyunk back in the early '90s.

Something that is funny, that I use sometimes if I'm doing comedy, is the fact that I'm now often mistaken for the rapper Rick Ross. And I don't know that I've ever corrected anyone - like I've never said, 'No no, I'm not Rick Ross, I'm Black Thought from The Roots.'

For a few years all I listened to was The Smiths, Things Fall Apart by The Roots, Love Is Dead by The Mr. T Experience, Nostalgic for Nothing by J Church, and the first Servotron album No Room for Humans. And that was it. For two or three years, those are the albums I listened to. I just fell into this very bizarre phase where my head shut down on me. I just obsessed over things and those albums happened to be in that rotation of me obsessing over things.