• 1987-

  Black ThoughtMC

  ?uestloveDrums

  KamalKeyboards1995-

  Frank KnucklesPercussion2002-

  Cap 'n KirkGuitar2002-

  Mark KelleyBass2011-
• The Roots' drummer ?uestlove was good friends with Amy Winehouse before her untimely passing. The two used to Skype back and forth sharing tidbits about music. When talking about his late friend, ?uestlove once told MSN that he had "never met a woman that knowledgeable about music."
• The group signed with Geffen Records in 1993, and left the label in 2005 on bad terms, with the band claiming they felt restricted. After leaving Geffen, The Roots took matters into their own hands and recorded themselves almost entirely using Apple's Garageband software. Game Theory, the resulting album, was released by Def Jam in 2006. The album landed The Roots a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album.
• Unknown to many fans, the person in the photo on the cover of The Roots' 2004 album The Tipping Point is Malcolm X. The picture was taken when he was only 18 years old before his conversion to Islam in prison. The iTunes version of the album features The Roots' MC Black Thought in the same pose in the place of Malcolm X.
• Comedian Dave Chappelle makes a guest appearance on The Roots' sixth album, The Tipping Point. He's on a hidden track called "In Love with the Mic." Chappelle is not credited in the liner notes of the record.
• The Roots' drummer ?uestlove is notorious for falling asleep during movies. When he was 6, he went to see Star Wars at the movie theater but fell asleep. He tried watching the re-release of the same movie in 1997 but fell asleep again. ?uestlove told The Believer magazine that "ever since Rain Main, I've realized that if I sit still for more than two hours, I'll fall asleep."
• Drummer ?uestlove from The Roots used to work at a record store called Sam Goody. He admits that he stole a cassette copy of De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising from the store and has loved the group ever since.
• The Roots were in New York City during the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and almost stayed at a hotel just four blocks from Ground Zero. Strangely yet fortunately, the hotel lost their reservation and the band was left scrambling to find another place to stay at the last minute.
• The Roots' drummer ?uestlove is a technology junkie with a collection of Apple computers. In the early years of Twitter (now X), he would Tweet up to 70 times a day, sometimes even during Roots live shows.
• Why is Ahmir K. Thompson called ?uestlove? He explained to Mojo magazine: "The Roots went through a bunch of phrases. We started as Radioactivity - Tariq was T Metaphor, I was A Sample. That didn't last long. Tariq rechristened us Black to the Future - he was Hawk Smooth and I was Divine Technician. He named me that, and I didn't like it.
  
  The day that De La Soul is Dead came out (in 1991), we said, 'We're going to take this seriously.' Tariq goes, 'I'm Black Thought,' and we changed our name to The Square Roots. He'd written down some other names for the group, and the last one was just a question mark. I took that. But when we did local press, everyone thoughts my name was Mark, or 'so brother question.'"
  
  Now if you were old school, you were either a Rock, Ski or Love. I chose ?uestlove."

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