Black Thought says it took over a year for The Roots to grasp Jimmy Fallon’s ‘Late Night’ offer

When Jimmy Fallon asked The Roots to be the band on his late-night talk show, the group initially thought it was BS. Speaking to Redman as part of Rolling Stone‘s Musicians on Musicians issue, Black Thought said they only started taking Fallon seriously after multiple requests.

“Man, the way we got the gig, Jimmy was always a huge music nerd. He’s a huge, huge Beastie Boys fan. That’s the first band that took The Roots on tour. We learned the ropes from them. When everything changed in ’07, ’08, [after] Napster hit and the way people were receiving their music changed, Jimmy came around and said, ‘I’m thinking about doing the Late Night show, and I need a band. Would you guys be interested in doing it?'” Black Thought recalled in his version of the Fallon gig story.

“We thought it was bulls*** until he kept coming around,” he added.

“We would show up at a gig, and he’d be in our dressing room, like, ‘Hey, hey, what’s up? I was serious about what we talked about,'” Black Thought continued, noting Jimmy “was dedicated” and had shown “up a bunch of times pitching it.”

“This was around the time that we had just got done working on Dave Chappelle’s show. It was so much uncertainty at that time that it sounded good to have a day job,” he said. “But we didn’t want it to mean the end of The Roots.”

The Roots have been Fallon’s house band since 2009 and have continued making music, releasing albums including How I Got Over in 2010, Undun in 2011 and …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin in 2014.

During the chat, Black Thought said his group is nearly done making the follow-up to their 2014 album.

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