Philadelphia Street Named After The Roots
The Roots have been a Philadelphia institution for decades. ?uestlove and Black Thought, the two original members who are still in the band, formed the Roots in 1987, when they were both students in a Philly performing-arts high school. They played their first show — not counting street-corner busking — at a 1989 talent show, and they released their first album, the indie LP Organix, in 1993. They’ve gone through a whole lot of changes over the years, and they’ve now spent more than a decade in New York, working as Jimmy Fallon’s house band. But they still return to Philadelphia every summer for their Roots Picnic festival. And now they’re getting the Philly honor of having a street named after themselves.
As Philly’s local NBC affiliate reports, City Council recently introduced a resolution to officially name a stretch of East Passyunk Avenue at South Street — where that raw shit at — to the Avenue Of The Roots. Before the resolution had been approved, the city had already put the sign up. Right now, it’s all the way live in 215.
?uestlove posted about the honor on Instagram this morning. Apparently, the group had been planning to do a big unveiling around this year’s Roots Picnic, but the city just went ahead and put the sign up ahead of schedule: “Philadelphia government may never have gotten anything done this quickly before…”
If I was Dice Raw or somebody, I would just spend the entire day hanging out under the sign today, waiting for people to notice.
