Dept. Of Dystopian Nightmares: In The (Very Immediate) Future, NBC Will Own Black Thought’s Rhymes
There’s a great AP piece out there in the ether right now by Jake Coyle detailing the genesis, reaction to, and slight weirdness that most certainly is The Roots becoming Jimmy Fallon’s house band. Coyle doesn’t flinch in describing what has often been a great paycheck but artistic death that comes with TV house band gigs, and puts forth something that we hadn’t considered about the gig, especially when it comes to Roots lead MC Black Thought:
“The gig is most awkward for Black Thought, the band’s frontman. He’ll mostly spit a quick rhyme or sing a couple lines, but that will be it. And anything that he sings or raps on air — as well as any music played — will immediately be owned by NBC Universal.”
Much like Facebook owning all of your party photos, it’s hard to imagine what exactly NBC would do or want with loads and loads of freestyle raps, but nonetheless, there it is. On the plus side, we’re predicting Fallon will be cancelled inside of six months anyway, and this whole thing will just be a lark on the long, strange trip that is the Roots, who are increasingly Philly’s answer to the Grateful Dead. And that’s a compliment, fellas.
Yahoo: RUN/NBC
February 19th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
I have no idea how well Fallon is going to do at Late Night in the long term, but there is no way they’ll cancel him in six months….even if the ratings are in the toilet. Conan had terrible ratings for the first two years. And even once they got a little bit better he didn’t really blow up until after Andy Richter left, surprisingly. NBC will back Fallon for years before they think twice about canning him. The real question is when does the Roots contract with NBC give them the first clean out if they want it, which they will of course.