Right On

The song borrows from singer/harpist Joanna Newsom's "Book of Right-On," a track from her 2004 album The Milk-Eyed Mender. Rather than using a sample, The Roots got Newsom to sing the hook for the song. Their collaboration came about as the Late Night With Jimmy Fallon house band work their Fallon day-jobs in the same building as Newsom's boyfriend, Saturday Night Live star Andy Samberg. "She's always around," Roots drummer and producer ?uestlove told Spinner. "I met them at a Dirty Projectors concert. I saw the Dirty Projectors for the first time [on the Fallon Show], became a massive fan and then put that video clip of them in my dressing room singing on the net. They said, 'Come to our show next week.' I went, and then I met Joanna Newsom and Andy there and it's like, 'Oh, be on our record.'"

The Roots eventually used Newsom's originally recording. She told UK's Uncut in an interview for the January 2011 edition of the magazine: "It took us a while to get there, 'cos they initially wanted an original source track, so they had me come in and record with them a bunch of harp stuff as well as re-doing vocals. Then they ended up using the original recording! 'Cos my voice has changed so much that I can't even do an impression of myself singing a few years ago."