The Roots' "How I Got Over" Guest List

The Roots' How I Got Over - the Philadelphia hip-hop band's first album since they took over house band duties on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon - finally has a hard and fast release date. It comes out June 22. And it's got a doozy of a guest list, thanks, no doubt, to the Rolodex building experence of being TV's premier late night band. A couple of bullet points speak to the increasing indie-rock/hip-hop crossover trend: The album will include a "reimagining" of the Monsters Of Folk's "Dear God," featuring originators Conor Oberst, M. Ward and Jim James of My Morning Jacket, and love-her-or-hate-her harpist Joanna Newsom on "Right On." Also helping the Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter-led band with their lofty goal of "depicting the everyman's search for hope in this dispiriting post-hop zeitgeist" will be Philly-based Icelandic singer Patty Crash, Phonte Coleman of Little Brother and Mercedes Martinez of Jazzyfatnastees. Not to mention, on "The Fire" and "Doin' It Again," soul man John Legend, who is backed by the Roots on his own new album of covers, Wake Up, which is also due in June. Legend and the Roots will be in Philadelphia on June 4 at the World Cafe Live at the Non-Comm Convention and, orf course, at the third annual The Roots Picnic at the Festival Pier on June 5.

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