Questlove, The Roots and Jimmy Fallon

Most music fans have heard of Questlove aka Ahmir Khalib Thompson, if not, you may recognize him as the impressive drummer for The Roots. Maybe you’re not well aware of who The Roots are, so here is a clip of their presence as the house band for Jimmy Fallon.

Questlove is a busy guy, when he is not playing the drums for The Roots, he is teaching at NYU as a professor among many other public undertakings. But how did Questlove and The Roots come to be a staple of late night television after making a name for themselves as the rebellious-kind of music makers?

Questlove describes their first interaction as completely disarming. Recalling how this goofy white guy with a bunch of african american band members completely owned his own goofiness. When Questlove and the rest of his band found themselves on the grass at UCLA making a human pyramid, they knew this experience would be a once in a lifetime experience.

It had seemed to the members of the Roots that after every show, they became a little more close. This is hard to believe since they had been together for so many years prior (since 1987) but Questlove’s describes it as “..becoming friends again”. They no longer were as guarded with each other and felt free to be as goofy as Jimmy.

This renewal of their relationship has resulted in five Grammy nominations that resulted in taking home the hardware twice. They have also contributed largely to the success of the Tonight Show helping Jimmy earn 4.13 million viewers a night!

It is safe to say that with the union of Jimmy Fallon, and Questlove along-side the rest of The Roots they have created a match made in heaven. Coupling the street cred of The Roots with the fanfare of Jimmy Fallon, there seems to be no end to their creative and entertaining potential.

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Music plays an enormous part in any TV show or movie, it drives the audience to feel what the character feels. In horror films high frequency strings make you feel on edge, while slow piano makes you relaxed and lets you know nothing bad is going to happen in the immediate future. In the newest hit show, Empire this is no different. It is a show about the music industry therefore one would assume that the music in the show would be second to none.

Who would have the set the hands that Fox TV would place this enormous responsibility in? None other than Timbaland, the famous producer known for his works with Missy Elliott, and Justin Timberlake to name a few. He has created iconic music for our generation that forces you to dance, even if against your will. Creating the original songs for this series is nothing but another day at the office for the iconic producer. This time around he has help from one of his protege’s Jim Beanz. Beanz wrote almost all of the original music for the inaugural season, raising his stock among the TV ranks. Beanz also plays an upcoming rapper in the series as he is blurring the lines from behind the scenes production to on the set acting.

With original music the TV executives are looking to match the shows popularity with the musical popularity. Creating a top selling soundtrack for TV or a movie almost always drives viewership of that media as well as creating another revenue stream for the production house. Shows like Glee, and movies like Django both saw success in creating original scores and Fox will look to mirror these instances.

Songs from the show have already started to peak the public’s interest as “Good Enough” showed a short tenure on iTunes top sellers list. If this is foreshadowing for anything that is yet to come with this young series, we may be seeing music from Empire on the top selling lists for many seasons to come.

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