The Roots

The Roots have consistently elevated music and culture as one of the most influential and impactful hip-hop collectives of all time. Founded by Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, the three-time Grammy Award-winning multi platinum group went from rapping on Philadelphia corners all the way to gigs at The White House, a longtime stint as the “house band” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and billing atop their own annual festival The Roots Picnic. Among numerous classics, they changed hip-hop forever with 1999’s platinum Things Fall Apart—which Rolling Stone named one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and Pitchfork graded 9.4-out-of-10. Their Grammy Awards include Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group for “You Got Me,” Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for “Hang On in There,” and Best R&B Album for Wake Up. As a live phenomenon, The Roots made history as the “first hip-hop group to perform at Lincoln Center,” and Rolling Stone lauded them as one of the “Twenty Greatest Live Acts in the World.” Black Thought and Questlove served as executive producers of the acclaimed AMC documentary series, Hip-Hop: The Songs That Shook America, and also launched their own film and television production company Two One Five Entertainment and locked down a first-look deal with Universal Television Alternative Studio and Universal Television. With their twelfth full-length album on the horizon, The Roots level up again and bring the whole culture with them.

KOKOKO! is a collective born in Kinshasa capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, a creative collision of different artists which fused at a block party. It consists of musical instrument inventors from the Ngwaka neighborhood, electronic producer débruit, Makara Bianko (aka the Lingwala devil), and his dancers bursting forth from the Lingwala neighborhood. KOKOKO! is best known for creating an aesthetic all their own by rewiring and up-cycling materials such as metal, cans, engine parts, and plastic containers found in Kinshasa’s streets into vital sculptural resonant dance music. Their distorted, fast rhythms and spontaneous, lo-fi electric sounds provide the chaotic soundtrack for the city’s harsh yet abundantly creative realities.

Katsu is a four-piece band focused on creating the next generation of tasty genre-bending funk-blues and prog-jazz while keeping an eye on the pulse and context of modern music. Hailing from Little Rock, Arkansas, Katsu is the brainchild of Baaqir Salaam, the guitarist and vocalist, backed by Duncan Ragsdell on bass, Tom Cooper on keys, and Devin Howard on drums. Named after Japanese fried food, they mirror the unhealthy amount of grooves that defines their music.