So What'd We Think?

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My love for the Legendary Roots Crew is well-known, but I don’t if I can sit through Fallon every night. He seems harmless enough (basically the principal requirement of a late night host) but sooner or later he’s gonna have to sit down and have those annoying, corny back and forths with milquetoast comedians and vapid starlets. Conan and Letterman are good at making those boring guests interesting. The jury is still out on Jimmy.* But in fairness, I seem to remember Conan sucking in the beginning.

*The Roots seem to think so, too.

G.D.

G.D.

Gene "G.D." Demby is the founder and editor of PostBourgie. In his day job, he blogs and reports on race and ethnicity for NPR's Code Switch team.
G.D.

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  • ladyfresshh

    I dvr’d it
    I don’t have great hope for fallon(never really did it for me funny bone wise) but i got my fingers crossed for the sake of the roots.

  • quadmoniker

    I actually thought that clip was pretty funny. It also seems to show that he’s aware that the Roots are bigger stars than he is, so they’re not just a backup. They should be part of it.

  • ladyfresshh

    ok thanks for the clip i hope the whole show is like this
    this is cracking me up

  • RtG

    I stayed up late yesterday specifically to watch this show. I had to turn it off after the Robert DeNiro interview because it was so awkward and painful to watch. Really, the whole conversation went nowhere. Maybe he had better luck with Justin Timberlake.

    The monologue was mediocre, but I give Jimmy a pass for that; he was visibly nervous. The Roots of course killededed it. It annoyed me is that Jimmy called Black Thought by his real name, Tariq.

  • melodik

    on the whole, watching it felt like being on an awkward first date where the convo is kinda forced, and the jokes aren’t that great, but you smile anyway to be polite.

    and i need Black Thought in my life.

  • Feral Historian

    Conan definitely sucked in the beginning – I had completely written him off at first. I think Fallon will fall into the groove – there’s a difference in being a late night talk host and being just a standup comedian. You’ve got to come out and do your monologue in the beginning, but then once the guests come out your job changes and you’ve got to try to make them look good.

  • Ron

    It was strange to watch The Roots playing second fiddle to ANYBODY, much less Jimmy Fallon. But…when I read that article and realized this was a deliberate attempt on their part to stay in one place for a while..and given how long they were slept on by the mainstream, lots of people’s grandmothers will now know who The Roots are and I guess that’s one hell of a tradeoff that never would’ve been possible even five years ago.

    Well that and they’re only hip-hop act with any pedigree on earth that could pull this off.

    So to that end…I want Jimmy to succeed for as long as The Roots are there hanging with him, beyond that..meh.

  • jaye

    thought the last line of the article basically summed it up:

    “…and the guys revert to their new role: backing band. I imagine they will be extremely good at it. Possibly too good.”

  • i don’t know if the roots is playing their full potential…and i don’t know how i feel about jimmy calling black thought “tariq”…and tariq singing, for that matter. i think the captain should be singing.

    i’ve never found jimmy to be funny, either. i’d rather watch craig ferguson with the roots!! that would be my dream late night show.

    but as “tariq” said in an interview with EW(http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20261644,00.html) “EW: What made you take this gig? BT: I mean, it’s a recession. It’s being felt in every industry. So the opportunity to have one foot in one industry and be able to put another foot in something else was just very welcome.”

    though the lick it for 10 was kind of funny, especially with the roots music and the slow-mo

  • The second ep was much, much better. But that may have been due to a lack of the awful, overrated Robert DeNiro.

  • ladyfresshh

    i’m ok with it
    i think it’s mainly due to the slow jamming the news
    i really loved it
    oh and justin he’s such a ham