Black Thought On Taking The Roots Picnic To London: “The World Is Our Oyster”​

Nearly two decades after The Roots Picnic first took root in Philadelphia, the festival is finally crossing the Atlantic. On Aug. 8 & 9, Roots Picnic London touches down at Crystal Palace Bowl for its first-ever international edition, with The Roots sharing their traditional headline slot with Nas and a Live Mixtape session featuring Black Thought, Yasiin Bey (fka Mos Def) and Benny The Butcher.

​Ahead of the show, Pollstar caught up with Roots co-founder and emcee, Black Thought (Tariq Trotter) to talk about why London, as opposed to somewhere else, is the festival’s first stop abroad, how nearly 20 years of Philadelphia know-how translates to a new market, and what it actually takes to build a festival that can scale globally without losing its sauce.

Pollstar: This is the first time the Roots Picnic is headed out across the pond. How did this all come together, and why was London the first international experience of this caliber?

​Black Thought: It came together in a really authentic way, organically. The Roots Picnic is obviously a brand we’ve been slowly, meticulously building over the past close to 20 years, and there were a couple different points at which we decided it might make sense to take the show on the road. We did the Roots Picnic in New York, at Bryant Park, over a two-day period. It was a huge success, but it was also an opportunity to test the waters, and we came to the realization that maybe it wasn’t completely time to take the show all the way on the road. So we reeled it back in.

​Eventually we started doing it as a one-off at the Hollywood Bowl , Roots Picnic Presents, out in LA, and we did that for the past four or five years, recalibrating and reconfiguring the whole concept. And now it was time to take it back on the road.

​As for why London makes sense , that’s the only other place The Roots has ever been based as a collective. We all lived together in London in the mid-’90s. Our first music released on a major label was an EP on a British subsidiary of MCA called Talkin’ Loud, that EP was called From the Ground Up. During that time, London was our home base. So it feels like a homecoming to be bringing the Roots Picnic there.

​And when I think about where the idea for the Picnic came from in the first place , it came from our experience during that era, playing Glastonbury, Reading, Montreux Jazz Festival. Those festivals gave us a model that felt scalable, something we could follow but also make our own. The question became: how do we build our own version of a Glastonbury, a Reading, a Lollapalooza, a Smoke & Grooves? The only way to do that is very carefully, over time. That’s how we’ve been building it.

I don’t think we’ll ever get to a point where the Roots Picnic leaves Philly for good, but I feel like the world is our oyster in terms of where it can go now from London. It’s a scalable model. It took time to figure out what the Roots Picnic is and what it should mean to us and to the culture. We’ve got that figured out now. So here we are.

Logistically, Philly is a home game; you know how the crowd’s going to react. London is more like an away game that’s also a home away from home. How did planning this differ from planning the Philly show, and what stayed the same?

​The biggest difference has been implementing boots on the ground who were London-based , assembling the extended hand, the long arm of the law, so to speak. People already on that side. We have a network of sorts, so it wasn’t like we had to go cold-case seeking folks out.

​What’s stayed the same is the bar. It doesn’t matter the size of the audience or the market we’re performing in; the bar remains the same. That’s just The Roots; we set ourselves apart by how professional we are. We’re adamant professionals. We rock hard, we rock wholeheartedly, we leave it all on the stage. We’re very reciprocal with our audience, but sometimes there’s an equation where the audience isn’t giving you what you need, and you still have to get them there. We’ve been together long enough that we’re able to turn inward, build something up internally, and then re-release it. That’s the beauty of a Roots performance; it’s always cathartic, therapeutic, a journey for everyone involved, listener and performer.

There aren’t many Black-centered festivals that are iconic, that carry the cachet and professionalism you’re known for, and that are still standing since COVID. Does that come with a sense of responsibility , to deliver that show no matter where you are , and how does that factor into planning?

​It does. For me it’s important to give people a consistent performance. It’s so much about who’s in the room and at what time , but it can’t only be about that. There has to be a level of show-must-go-on-ness to it. If we thought there’d be 70,000 people and only seven show up, you still have to rock out and execute the plan.

​I think the beauty of doing something in the UK, and of the festivals we cut our teeth on in Europe, is that the focus is on musicianship , on sustainability, tradition, legacy, and diversity, in the bill and in the audience. It was beautiful for us to have those examples. Roskilde Festival in Copenhagen is a good one; we started out playing on the super outskirts of that festival, with such low-level credential access we couldn’t even get into the main part. Over the years, we came back and co-headlined with Bruce Springsteen for about 150,000 people. There’s beauty and value in a band still being around after rising through those ranks. We didn’t take a shortcut; you have to go through it to get to it. There’s no shortcut to that kind of sustainability. It’s an honor and a privilege, and I don’t take it for granted. Groups don’t last 40 years playing jazz festivals and Montreux in the tens and twenties of times very often. I think there’s a different appreciation for art and culture outside the States, generally speaking. Sometimes more, sometimes less; it’s valleys and peaks , but it’s different, to say the least.

When putting together this bill , Nas, Yasiin Bey, Benny The Butcher and the rest , how do you land on a final lineup? The Roots Picnic lineups are famous for being stacked, banger after banger, no skips. How do you get there?

​It’s a process of elimination. It always comes down to a decision between Questlove, myself, Shawn Gee, and maybe one or two other opinions factoring in. I feel like we’ve got a good thing going, a good stride. I might have a favorite, one of my business partners might have a favorite, but we try not to let that sway the big picture , the overarching theme, which is the greater good and the success of the festival.

​We wanted it to feel as diverse as possible, as off-the-cuff as possible , as close to improvisational as it can be while still being a uniquely curated experience. The first batch of ideas is never the final lineup. Not everyone is going to make the cut, and not all of our personal favorites are going to be part of the equation. Honestly, we start thinking about the next Roots Picnic the moment the current one ends: how can we do it differently, bigger, better, more soulfully? How do we pour into our audience in a different way?

​As for the Live Mixtape with J. Period , that’s usually based on who I have a real relationship with. MCs I’ve already collaborated with, on stage or in the studio, folks I think can pick up where we leave off energetically. You’ve got to be able to hold your own with the GOATs.

​This year’s Live Mixtape has Yasiin Bey and Benny The Butcher. Buffalo’s been buzzing about Benny sharing that stage.

​That’s the truth. This is Benny’s second time doing the Live Mixtape at a Picnic; he rocked out a few years ago with me in Philly, and again, it was soul-feeding, not knowing what to expect and then being pleasantly surprised. Benny hit me up a couple days after that Philly set and said he’d never seen that many Black people together in one place. That’s when it really dawned on me that that’s the service we provide. We bring the culture to you on a grand scale. It’s the biggest, Blackest, most Philadelphia-centric thing that’s going to happen. And every year the challenge is: how do we one-up ourselves?

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You mentioned planning starts right after the last Picnic ends. Did the London show start taking shape back after 2025’s outing?

​Absolutely. This year , Philly with Hov, and now London with Nas, Yasiin Bey and everybody else, that planning began after 2025’s run. We already had ideas: we want Hov here, we want Nas over here.

​I don’t think there were any real difficulties getting from what we envisioned to the finished product , no insurmountable obstacles. There’s always a certain amount of personalities and egos to manage when you’re one of the few people the billing comes down to. It’s about being diplomatic, professional, and emotionally mature in those instances. But none of it has been smooth sailing exactly; I feel like we’ve gotten it down to a science at this point. This is one of the true tests: let’s see if this is scalable. Once we conquer London, I think we could take this anywhere. We’ve always considered other places: South Africa, Japan, Africa proper. Hopefully this is a really organic entry point to those other potential experiences.

Did you think, back when you conceived the Picnic in the late 2000s, that it would get this big?

​That was always the intention , that was the vision. We were hopeful. We always wanted it to take place on the site it now takes place on, and this was actually our first year officially arriving at Belmont Plateau. So I think we had as much of it figured out as could be expected.

Live Nation Urban and Palace Bowl Presents are producing the London show. How does that partnership structure compare to Philly? What does that mean for the festival from an industry standpoint?

​You want to partner with someone who has a comparable aesthetic and philosophy in a way…a comparable vision, and again, we talk about sustainability…something you begin together and take as a journey in tandem.

Now, listen, you can’t rush into these relationships; you have to go through it to get to it. It’s about finding a perfect fit, being real with yourself and your team. Sometimes there’s a company, a brand, someone you’ve always pictured yourself partnering with, and it just doesn’t feel like a thousand percent when the opportunity presents itself. There’s real value, and a certain sage wisdom, in recognizing when that is or isn’t the case. Only time will tell; I think we made the right decision, and I think this is something we’ll be able to rock out for years. If that’s not the case, we adjust accordingly.

What does a successful first London Picnic actually look like to you?

​A successful London Picnic, for me, is one that leaves the audience feeling soulfully enriched…poured into. I want the audience to feel like they’ve been through an experience, that they’ve come out the other side of it and are better for it. And ideally, we want to leave them wanting more (laughs).

Roots Picnic London takes place Aug. 8 & 9 at Crystal Palace Bowl, produced by Live Nation Urban and Palace Bowl Presents.