Kicking off September 13, the inaugural Hip Hop with Honors Tour will feature the Philadelphia collective The Roots performing absolutely none of their own songs.

“This is a hip-hop celebration,” ?uestlove explains. “I’m going to take the biggest risk I’ve ever taken on any tour. I’m going to make this a Roots song-free tour. We’re going to rely on the classics that our guests are giving us, and we’re also going to cover some classic material and do some new routines that we’ve never done before.”

The shows will be an expansion of the groups usual in-concert medley including snippets of hip hop classics, dubbed “Hip Hop 101.” Also joining the collective on the tour are MC Lyte and Big Daddy Kane.

In other Roots news, they’ve penciled in a release date for their tenth studio album, Rising Down on April 29, 2008.http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003633536