If you aren’t lucky enough to be in Philly today for The Roots Picnic 2011, WXPN and Okayplayer have you covered with a webcast of the main stage.  Be sure to tune in at 1pm today, Saturday 6/4 to hear performances from Little Dragon, The Dismemberment Plan, Ariel Pink, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes, Esperanza Spalding (backed by The Roots), Wiz Khalifa, Nas (backed by The Roots) and of course, The Legendary Roots Crew.  Live stream after the jump!

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Last year The Legendary held over 30 epic jam sessions at Highline Ballroom in NYC.  Each one was incredible and personally, I would rank many of them among their best shows ever.  There were countless memorable moments, but at their final jam session, The Roots jumped into an amazing 20 minute improvised jam with jazz icons Marcus Miller on bass and Christian Scott on trumpet.  Joining them were other talented musicians including Teodross Avery, Jason Moran, Maurice Brown, and of course, the Roots Crew.  You dont want to miss our exclusive recording after the jump.

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The 4th annual Okayplayer Holiday Jam was held last month and a slew of guests came out to rock the stage with The Legendary.  One of the highlights of the night was when the cast of FELA! walked over from Broadway to transform B.B. Kings into the The Shrine.  Black Thought kicked it off with an afrobeat mix of Criminal, which morphed into dozens of musicians and dancers taking the stage, bringing the full spirit of Fela with them.  Enjoy our exclusive recording of the 15 min performance, and if you can dig it say “Yeah, Yeah!”

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J.Period and Black Thought performed a very rare show together last month to close out The Manifesto festival in Toronto.  Today, we get the “Live Mixtape (Illadelph Edition) EP”, a J.Period mixtape recorded live onstage at the hip hop festival.  Black Thought tears though a 30 minute barrage of live J.Period remixes, rhyming over an array of beats from the likes of Foxy Brown, Damian Marley, Dead Prez, Jay-Z, Snoop, Biggie, Drake, and many more.   Grab the full length EP and check out some HD footage of the performance after the jump.

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The  Roots & Q-Tip headlined the Hennessy Artistry tour this year and last week they touched down in NYC for the grand finale.  As with all the Hennessy shows, there were many special guests as Ronald Isley, Bobby Brown, Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu, Mike Posner, D-Nice and Eve all took the stage with The Legendary.  Hennessy was gracious enough to stream the event live on ustream, so you can check out the full concert on-demand below, as well as download our audio rip of the show.

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John Legend & The Roots played a special show at Terminal 5 this week in support of Wake Up that was broadcast on YouTube and directed by Spike Lee.  It served as a great release party, as all of the album’s special guests were in the house (Common, Melanie Fiona, CL Smooth) as well as a surprise performance from Jennifer Hudson.  Here is the full audio and video downloads.

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