Amir “Questlove” Thompson and Tarik “Black Thought” Trotter of The Roots have signed a first-look TV deal with NBC’s Universal TV. The three-year deal will allow for the Hip-Hop duo to develop scripted and unscripted series on multiple platforms.
Questlove and Black Thought have had a relationship with NBC as the long time live band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Both creatives have worked on projects with Black Thought starring in an upcoming off-Broadway musical and Questlove hosting his Podcast on Pandora.
The Pennsylvania native’s signed the deal through their company Two One Five Entertainment named after their hometown Philadelphia. The musicians released a statement following the news.
“Many of our initial projects have been music-centric content, and one of our goals is to become the premiere hub for music storytelling — a safe space for these stories to be shared across a variety of platforms. Eventually we will expand outside of music with our stories,” Black Thought said in his statement.
“This deal is very important to us as we’ve been content producers and storytellers for our entire career,” Questlove said in a separate statement. “A significant investment from Universal Television Alternative Studio and Universal Television in our vision allows us to share these stories on a much larger scale.”
