The Roots were inducted into Billboard's Hip-Hop Hall of Fame on Wednesday (Sept. 9), with founding members Questlove and Black Thought accepting the honor at New York City's Ludlow House during the 2026 R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players ceremony.
The recognition marked a full-circle moment for the two, who have been friends for more than four decades. Black Thought recalled that a young Questlove once decorated his bedroom walls with old Billboard music reviews, a detail he shared while reflecting on the honor.
"That's the beautiful contradiction of American culture: It can take something born on the margins, put it on a billboard and then make everyone admit that, yes, this was the center of the story all along," Black Thought said. "So we accept this honor on behalf of every musician who ever taped a poster up on the wall and every musician who ever kept playing when no one else was listening."
Questlove traced the honor back to a pivotal choice he and Black Thought made as teenagers in Philadelphia. Both were preparing to attend different colleges before deciding, on a single Saturday, to instead busk on a street corner together.
"For me, this moment is seminal because this is really just the story of two high-school best friends in Philadelphia going on a whim," Questlove said. "Both of us were going to go to different colleges and see where life took us. Then, just one Saturday, we made a decision to start busking on the street corner and see what happens. Forty years later, this is what happened."
Photo: Nan Palmero from San Antonio, TX, USA, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
