The Roots on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon"are bringing hip-hop to the mainstream TV audience

The Roots ready for 'Late Night' life
By Jake Coyle, Associated Press | February 24, 2009
NEW YORK - The Roots are making sandwiches.

The band is holed-up in a Manhattan studio, preparing for its new gig as the house band on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," the NBC show that will take Conan O'Brien's place when O'Brien moves to "The Tonight Show."
They're working long days to create 200 "sandwiches" - the intros and outros that will buffer each segment on the show.

"Right now, my whole life is this show," said drummer Ahmir Thompson, better known as ?uestlove.

Since forming in Philadelphia in the early 1990s, the Roots has been one of the best regarded bands in hip-hop. It was one of the first hip-hop bands to take up instruments, and it's been an acclaimed act for nearly two decades, with respectable (though not huge) album sales.
THE ROOTS FT. CHRISETTE MICHELLE AND WALE "RISING UP"


So when word got out that the Roots would be following in the tradition of Paul Shaffer and Kevin Eubanks, the blogosphere and much of the music world erupted in say-it-ain't-so shock.
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