Watch Common, Black Thought, Big Boi, Killer Mike, Busta & more on a very hip hop week of ‘Fallon’

Gaia Writer

It's been a hip hop-heavy week on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, whose latest guest was Common performing his new single "Say Peace" alongside the song's two guest vocalists: PJ and Black Thought (the latter of whom is also in The Roots, aka Fallon's house band). It's not exactly clear how "live" or "together" the performance was, as a green screen was definitely involved, but it's a very cool clip. This followed Big Boi, Sleepy Brown, Killer Mike and Big Rube performing "We The Ones" on the Fallon stage on Monday, and Busta Rhymes (with Anderson .Paak) on Halloween. Watch those three performances below.

While this was all going down, a two-week-old clip from Fallon, in which Bernie Sanders essentially predicted the delayed outcome of the election, has been going viral. In the clip, the Vermont senator said, "You're going to have a situation, I suspect, in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, other states, where they are going to be receiving huge amounts of mail-in ballots. Unlike states like Florida or Vermont, they're not able — for bad reasons — to begin processing those ballots until Election Day, or maybe when the polls close. That means you're going to have states dealing with perhaps millions of mail-in ballots." You can view that clip below too.

As previously discussed, Black Thought has promised more volumes of Streams of Thought, his long-in-the-works collaborative album with Danger Mouse, and the long-awaited new Roots album for 2021. In October, he released Streams of Thought: Volume 3: Cane & Able, an effort featuring guest appearances from artists such as Pusha T, Killer Mike, Swizz Beatz, Schoolboy Q, and others (which we named one of the best rap albums of October). Most recently, he performed the album's track "State Prisoner" on A Colors Show (watch below).

Black Thought was also just interviewed for a new Vulture feature in which he talked about coming to terms with being called “your favorite rapper’s rapper” after getting a co-sign from The God MC himself, Rakim:

I've always gotten that I'm "your favorite rapper's favorite rapper." Depending on who it's coming from, it holds more weight, and it's more of a feeling of having accomplished what I intended to do in the beginning of my career or what I've been doing all this time. One of the most memorable compliments that I've ever received was within the last year. It was around this time in 2019, when Rakim was a guest on The Wendy Williams Show. He was promoting a book that he had come out with, and she said to him, "You're the God MC. You're many people's top one. So who's your favorite MC?" I'm not sure how she worded the question exactly, but she asked who he listened to, and he said he listened to me. I dropped the mic, like, "Fuck all y'all haters — my work is done here! Mission accomplished!" I was moved by that compliment.

Black Thought and Questlove were among the many musicians to curate Election Day playlists for the Joy to the Polls campaign. Questlove also made a second "ANXIETY edition," perfect to listen to while we wait for the official results.