Jump to content

The Roots


DRC

Recommended Posts

  • 9 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
The Roots don't stop. How I Got Over, their newest album, has barely been in stores three days, and already the band has announced the release of heir next full-length. When you factor in the band's day job as house band on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon", not to mention their relentless touring schedule, that's just a staggering amount of work for one group of dudes.

The band has already announced plans for the new one: Wake Up! (yes, it's named after the Arcade Fire song) is a full-length collaboration with silky crooner John Legend, consisting entirely of covers of vintage conscious soul songs. The album is due September 21 from Sony Music. According to a press release, it includes covers of songs like Marvin Gaye's "Wholly Holy", Donny Hathaway's "Little Ghetto Boy", Baby Huey and the Babysitters' "Hard Times", and Mike James Kirkland's "Hang on in There". Common and Melanie Fiona contribute to the first single, "Wake Up Everybody", originally by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.

There's also one original song on the album: "Shine", Legend's contribution to the soundtrack of the documentary Waiting for "Superman". Below, you can watch a live-in-studio performance of Legend and the Roots doing "Hard Times", via Legend's website.

http://pitchfork.com/news/39265-rootsjohn-legend-covers-lp-details/

Above everything else that defines them, the Roots are capital-P Professionals. That's why they're perfect for their "Late Night" job. They don't fit there because, as critics would say, they're easily digestible; they fit because they're versatile and consistently operate at a high level. They're encyclopedic music scholars who're proud of their chops but don't flash them at the expense of an accessible hook. They never compromise, even though they're refined enough to help set the standards for grown-man class in hip-hop. And it's possible to listen to their last few albums without being reminded they're big-idea concept records, even though their themes leave an impression fairly quickly.

So after all the delays and discarded material (whatever happened to that "Peaches En Regalia" cover?), How I Got Over has emerged as a particularly efficient album. It's the Roots' shortest (a lean 42 and a half minutes), one of their most lyrically straightforward, and a work of strong stylistic cohesion. A decade's worth of personnel changes notwithstanding, it's clear that this is the same braintrust that made "The Next Movement" sound so vibrant 11 years ago; the two most prominent instrumental components remain ?uestlove's in-the-pocket drumming and the Ahmad Jamal/Donny Hathaway resonance of Kamal Gray's keyboards. And on the mic, Black Thought maintains his usual level-headed authority, continuing to come across at his best like a down-to-earth version of Rakim.

But what makes How I Got Over work is its sense of purpose. After the jaw-clenching stress rap of their last two excellent Def Jam releases, Game Theory and Rising Down, this record operates as a slow-build mission statement on how to overcome. Everything hinges on the title track, a stirring anthem built from a congas-and-organ backbone that sounds like a funkier, livelier inversion of Steely Dan's "Do It Again". As a showcase for Dice Raw and Black Thought's unexpectedly tender singing voices-- as well as the latter MC's ability to elevate simple sentiments with his delivery-- it feels like the group's usual rigorous standards being met. But it isn't exactly an accurate indication of how the album itself turns out sounding.

Instead, it's a pivot point, where everything before its halfway-mark appearance is the tunnel and everything afterwards is the light. How I Got Over is sequenced with a distinct idea of mood progression, changing from defeated, malaise-stricken piano-ballad dirges to defiant statements of survival and resilience. Black Thought's tough lamentations on early tracks "Walk Alone" and "Radio Daze" pick up where the more introspective moments of Rising Down left off. And even if he pushes a few metaphors past the breaking point or coasts on stating the obvious for a line or two, he doesn't suffer from a lack of relatability.

Once "How I Got Over" breaks through the first half's well-crafted melancholy and transitions into its more resolute second half, the sound shifts from glowing downtempo neo-soul to something more energized. "Right On" pits Joanna Newsom's lilting voice and harp against one of the most commanding drum breaks on the album; John Legend is artfully deployed as both a ghostly sample (the cathedral-sized "Doin' It Again") and an intense live vocalist ("The Fire"); "Web 20/20" upends the minimalist snare-driven charge of its Tipping Point namesake and mutates it into a jury-rigged, elastic-ricochet revamp of snap music. Black Thought ups his mood over the course of things as well, and by the time they reach the record's unlikely final hook-- "Hustla"'s Auto-Tuned crying-baby-- he's turning struggles into strengths for the sake of his next generation.

A lot has been made of the indie rock collaborations on this album, particularly the appearances by Newsom, the Monsters of Folk on "Dear God 2.0", and the wordless a cappella chorus from Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian, and Haley Dekle of the Dirty Projectors on the intro track "A Peace of Light". But their crossover efforts land firmly on the Roots' side of the equation, integrating into their Soulquarian aesthetic instead of nudging them the other way. Meanwhile, the guest MCs do just as much to round out How I Got Over's personality. The recurring satellite members that bolstered the ranks on Rising Down reprise their roles here (an on-fire Dice Raw, the low-key sharpness of Truck North and P.O.R.N., the obligatory show-stealing Peedi Peedi appearance). "Right On" and "Hustla" make for a couple of good showcases for promising Philly-via-ATL up-and-comer STS, who's molded his semi-drawl into an agile flow. And there's a couple of fine verses from Little Brother's Phonte and some absolute revelations from L.A. phenom Blu, both of whom sound vital even when they spend most of their time describing their anxiety.

How I Got Over has its title for a reason. It alludes to the gospel standard popularized by Clara Ward, and has a similarly spiritual-minded cast to it as its namesake's tribute to the power of belief in helping people reach the promised land. Maybe it's not as explicitly religious, but it regularly alludes to some form of higher power, whether it's God or a more secular sense of things that are simply out of civilization's control. And that's the compelling thing about the Roots on this album: They're not afraid to show humility and frustration when confronted with struggle, operating on the same level of humanity as the people who listen to it. For all the Roots' tight professionalism and clockwork consistency, for all their late-night TV exposure and their status as alt-rap icons, they're not superhuman. But the fact that they know this, that they can make a whole album about coming to terms with it-- that makes them powerful.

8.1/10

— Nate Patrin, June 25, 2010

The Fire feat John Legend and B.O.B

http://www.okayplayer.com/news/Audio-The-Roots-The-Fire-Remix-feat.-B.o.B-John-Legend.html

My Generation feat John Legend

http://usershare.net/kv12to5oq723

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
John Legend and The Roots deliver a Wake Up! call to listeners with their soulful collaborative effort. The 11-track album, due September 21, contains covers of songs from the ’60s and ’70s, including Marvin Gaye’s “Wholy Holy,” Donny Hathaway’s “Little Ghetto Boy,” and the Common and Melanie Fiona-assisted first single “Wake Up Everybody.” The inspiring collection also features one original composition called “Shine,” which serves as the theme for the documentary Waiting for Superman.

“These songs sound so relevant now,” stated Legend. “On most of them, you wouldn’t change a lyric. ‘Wake Up Everybody’ has four verses—the first one is a general statement, the second is about education, third is about health care, and the fourth is about making a better environment. No editing needed.”

Rap-Up.com has your first look at the tracklisting below.

1. “Compared to What”

2. “Hard Times”

3. “Little Ghetto Boy”

4. “Wake Up Everybody” feat. Common and Melanie Fiona

5. “Our Generation”

6. “Love the Way It Should Be”

7. “Hang On in There”

8. “I Can’t Write Left Handed”

9. “Wholy Holy”

10. “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free”

11. “Shine”

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...

the-roots-x-john-legend-wake-up-coverart.jpg

01 05:16 Hard Times Feat. Black Thought ÛÛ

02 06:27 Compared To What ÛÛ

03 04:25 Wake Up Everybody Feat. Common & Melanie Fiona ÛÛ

04 03:16 Our Generation ÛÛ

(The Hope Of The World) Feat. Cl Smooth ÛÛ

05 01:59 Little Ghetto Boy (Prelude) Feat. Malik Yusef ÛÛ

06 05:26 Little Ghetto Boy Feat. Black Thought ÛÛ

07 07:15 Hang On In There ÛÛ

08 03:49 Humanity (Love The Way It Should Be) ÛÛ

09 05:50 Wholy Holy ÛÛ

10 11:44 I Can't Write Left Handed ÛÛ

11 02:43 I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free ÛÛ

12 04:44 Shine

Leaked*

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
The Philly crew enlists Big K.R.I.T. for the offering's first single, "Make My."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xSCPM4Zb9U

http://hulkshare.com/7mr15ibpfd9i

In anticipation of the December 6th release of their first-ever concept album, The Roots has announced that its first single off undun will be titled "Make My" featuring Big K.R.I.T. The cut will impact iTunes on November 1st.

Additionally, the group revealed that the album is a re-telling of Redford Stephens, illustrating "the intersection of free will and prescribed destiny as it plays out 'on the corner.' Utilizing a reverse narrative arc, the album begins as the listener finds Redford disoriented--postmortem--and attempting to make sense of his former life. As he moves through its pivotal moments he begins to deconstruct all that has led to his (and our own) coming undun."

"At this point in our career we'd like for our work to have a unifying theme, and an experiential quality,” said Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson in a press release. “We've been intentionally making our albums shorter in length so that they can be experienced as a continuous work. The music is band-oriented with an eye on the moody cinematic. As a DJ, I am the King of playlists, but I don't want our albums to feel like a playlist or a mixtape for that matter. We want to tell stories that work within the album format and we want the stories to be nuanced and useful to people. undun is the story of this kid who becomes criminal, but he wasn't born criminal. He's not the nouveau exotic primitive bug-eyed gunrunner like Tupac’s character Bishop in “Juice”... he's actually thoughtful and is neither victim nor hero. Just some kid who begins to order his world in a way that makes the most sense to him at a given moment... At the end of the day... isn't that what we all do?”

Check the tracklist below.

1. Sleep

2. Make My

3. One Time

4. Kool On

5. The Jump

6. Stomp

7. Lighthouse

8. I Remember

9. Tip The Scale

10. Redford

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...