When The Roots took over as the house band for Jimmy Fallon’s late night act in 2009, there was plenty of hand-wringing and griping from the live hip-hop phenoms’ fanbase: How are they possible going to be able to do anything else now?
Cut to 12 years later. Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, for one, has proceeded to release three albums, write multiple books, DJ countless events, voice a character in Pixar’s Oscar-winning animated film Soul, and serve as a producer on the Broadway smash Hamilton, the musical producer of the 2021 Academy Awards telecast and as an instructor at NYU.
All this while missing only two shows for Fallon.
“I had an emergency root canal one day,” Questlove laughed during a recent interview (watch above), just leaving the “roots canal” pun there dangling for us. “So it was like, ‘Maybe I should take the day off.’ But I’m there every Monday, and there till the end of the weekend. And still manage to juggle 12 other things, including making this movie.”
