RhoDeo 2118 Grooves

Hello,  


Today's Artists One of the most prolific rap groups, were also among the most progressive acts in contemporary music, from their 1993 debut through their conceptual 2010s releases. Despite the seemingly archaic practice of functioning as a rap band with several instrumentalists -- from 2007 onward, their lineup even featured a sousaphonist -- they were ceaselessly creative, whether with their own material or through their varied assortment of collaborations. They went platinum and gold with successive studio releases and won a handful of Grammy Awards. After they gained a nightly nationwide audience through a close partnership with television host Jimmy Fallon, they continued to challenge listeners with works free of genre restrictions..  N Joy

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx



Members
Black Thought (vocals), ?uestlove (drums), Malik B (vocals, 1987-99), Joshua Abrams (bass, 1988-90), Leonard Hubbard (bass, 1992-2007), Kid Crumbs (vocals, 1993), Scott Storch (keyboards, 1995), Kamal Gray (keyboards, 1995-present), Dice Raw (vocals, 1995-2000), Rahzel (human beatbox, 1995-99), Scratch (human beatbox, 1998-2003), Ben Kenney (guitar, 2000-03), Frank Walker (percussion, 2002-present), Martin Luther (vocals, 2003-04), Kirk Douglas (guitar, 2003-present), Damon Bryson (sousaphone, 2007-present), Owen Biddle (bass, 2007-11), Mark Kelley (bass, 2011-present), Stro Elliot (producer, sampling, 2017-present)



Organix The Roots' focus on live music began back in 1987, when rapper Black Thought (Tariq Trotter) and drummer ?uestlove (Ahmir Khalib Thompson) became friends at the Philadelphia High School for Creative Performing Arts. Playing around school, on the sidewalk, and later at talent shows (with ?uestlove's drum kit backing Black Thought's rhymes), the pair began to earn money and hooked up with bassist Hub (Leon Hubbard) and rapper Malik B. Moving from the street to local clubs, the Roots became a highly tipped underground act around Philadelphia and New York. When they were invited to represent stateside hip-hop at a concert in Germany, the Roots recorded an album to sell at shows; the result, Organix, was released in May 1993 on Remedy Records. With a music industry buzz surrounding their activities, the Roots entertained offers from several labels before signing with DGC that same year.

Do You Want More?!!!??! The Roots' first major-label album, Do You Want More?!!!??!, was released in January 1995. Forsaking usual hip-hop protocol, the record was produced without any samples or previously recorded material. It peaked just outside the Top 100 of the Billboard 200 and made more tracks in alternative circles, partly due to the Roots playing the second stage at Lollapalooza that summer. The band also journeyed to the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Two of the guests on the album who had toured around with the band, human beatbox Rahzel the Godfather of Noyze -- previously a performer with Grandmaster Flash and LL Cool J -- and Scott Storch (later replaced by Kamal Gray), became permanent members of the group.

Illadelph Halflife Early in 1996, the Roots released "Clones," the trailer single for their second album. It hit the rap Top Five, and created a good buzz. That September, Illadelph Halflife appeared and made number 21 on the Billboard 200. Much like its predecessor, though, the Roots' second LP was a difficult listen. It made several very small concessions to mainstream rap -- the bandmembers sampled material that they had recorded earlier at jam sessions -- but failed to make a hit of their unique sound. Their third album, February 1999's Things Fall Apart, was easily their biggest critical and commercial success. Released on MCA, it went platinum, and "You Got Me" -- a collaboration with Erykah Badu -- peaked within the Top 40 and subsequently won a Grammy in the category of Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

Phrenology The long-awaited Phrenology was released in November 2002 amid rumors of the Roots losing interest in their label arrangements with MCA. In 2004, the band remedied the situation by creating the Okayplayer company. Named after their website, Okayplayer included a record label and a production/promotion company. The same year, the band held a series of jam sessions to give their next album a looser feel. The results were edited down to ten tracks and released in July 2004 as The Tipping Point, supported by Geffen. A 2004 concert from Manhattan's Webster Hall with special guests like Mobb Deep, Young Gunz, and Jean Grae was issued in February 2005 as The Roots Present in both CD and DVD formats. Two volumes of the rarities-collecting Home Grown! The Beginner's Guide to Understanding the Roots appeared at the end of the year.

Game Theory A subsequent deal with Def Jam fostered a series of riveting, often grim sets, beginning with Game Theory (August 2006) and Rising Down (April 2008). In 2009, the group expanded their reach as the exceptionally versatile house band on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. The new gig didn't slow their recording schedule; in 2010 alone, they released the sharp How I Got Over (June), as well as Wake Up! (September), where they backed John Legend on covers of socially relevant soul classics like Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' "Wake Up Everybody" and Donny Hathaway's "Little Ghetto Boy." It earned Grammy Awards for Best R&B Album and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance. As they remained with Fallon, the Roots worked with Miami soul legend Betty Wright on November 2011's Betty Wright: The Movie, and followed it the next month with their 13th studio long-player, Undun, an ambitious concept album whose main character dies in the first track and then follows his life backward.

Wise Up Ghost and Other Songs Work on the group's next studio LP was postponed as an unexpected duet album with Elvis Costello took priority for the group in 2013. Originally planned as a reinterpretation of Costello's songbook, the record Wise Up Ghost turned into a full-fledged collaboration and was greeted by positive reviews upon its September 2013 release on Blue Note. Within six months, the band joined Jimmy Fallon in his new late-night slot, the high-profile Tonight Show program. Another concept album, the brief but deep ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin, was released in May 2014. Rapper Malik B., a fixture on the Roots' early albums, died on July 29, 2020, at the age of 47.

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

It would've been easy for the Roots to sell out. Already one of the few groups whose fans extend beyond the typical alternative rap base, tacking on the acoustic-guitary pop-rap song "Birthday Girl" -- which leaked the month before Rising Down's release and features Patrick Stump crooning "What is it we want to do, now that I'm allowed to be alone with you?" -- could've been a natural, and maybe even excusable move. Excusable as a way to show that the Roots can be lighthearted, fun, and tongue-in-cheek (though anyone who's heard any of their interviews or has frequented ?uestlove's blog already knows this to be true); not excusable, however, as the crossover track the label wanted it to be (and in fact, in Japan and Europe, as well as digitally, it remains as such). Fortunately, the Roots were smart and thoughtful enough -- the very qualities of whose criticism led to the creation of "Birthday Girl" -- to realize that its inclusion, even as an afterthought, a bonus track, was detrimental to the effect of the entire album, dumbing down their thoughts on poverty and race and politics with poppy melodies and creepy (albeit ironic) jokes about statutory rape and predatory old men.

Because as it stands, Rising Down acts as a powerful statement on contemporary society, a society in which even though the specific issues may have changed (global warming, BET, new technologies), the problems remain the same. For this reason the album begins and ends with a discussion from 1994, where Black Thought and ?uestlove are arguing about then-label Geffen with their managers, and other bits of the past are also spread throughout -- the 1987 freestyle "@15," which complements "75 Bars (Black's Reconstruction)," the reflection found in "Unwritten" and especially in the cover itself, which nods to the crude caricatures from early America, the black devil wreaking havoc on the white pilgrims below. But it is these very reminders that make the Roots and their message in 2008 so much more relevant: they give context. So when Black Thought says "It is what it is, because of what it was/I did what I did 'cause it does what it does" in "Criminal," he's not just looking as his character's current situation, he's drawing from history, and his conclusions are based upon lifetimes of "it being it" and "doing what it does," of struggling and fighting and trying to get by, to make it however he can.

These same thoughts are echoed by the Roots' MC and the myriad talented guests who add their own equally hard-hitting verses to the album's tracks. "My life is on a flight that's going down/My mother had an abortion for the wrong child/...I felt love, that's gone now" Porn rhymes in the disquieting "I Can't Help It" (the other rappers on the song tackle ideas of chemical and monetary addictions), while on "Singing Man," the dark, reticent production gurgles with the pain and anger heard and stated more overtly in the three MCs' voices (Porn, Black Thought, and Truck North) as they present the sympathetic -- but not condoning -- perspectives of suicide bombers and campus shooters and child soldiers. It's dark and serious and intense, but Rising Down does offer hope, too, mostly in the form of the closing track, "Rising Up," which features Def Jam backing vocals queen Chrisette Michele, D.C. upstart Wale, and a Jay-Z-friendly beat. "We 'bout to dominate the world like Oprah did it," Black Thought says to end the song, an optimism that's far more powerful than anything "Birthday Girl" can provide. Those words, confident but not cocky, are the final punctuation -- an ellipsis, though, leading to a yet-completed thought -- on an album that's both revelatory and full of questions, an album that understands its spot in the Roots' history and American history, and an album that continues to place the group as one of the country's most talented and relevant in any genre, no calculated crossover necessary.



<a href="https://multiup.org/66e152fa90cb2a9a50d2cdbccecb501d"> The Roots - Rising Down</a> (flac   352mb)

01 The Pow Wow 1:15
02 Rising Down 3:40
03 Get Busy 3:29
04 @ 15 0:51
05 75 Bars (Black’s Reconstruction) 3:15
06 Becoming Unwritten 0:36
07 Criminal 4:08
08 I Will Not Apologize 4:34
09 I Can’t Help It 4:39
10 Singing Man 4:07
11 Unwritten 1:22
12 Lost Desire 3:58
13 The Show 3:44
14 Rising Up 4:19
15 Birthday Girl (ft. Patrick Stump) 4;05
16 The Grand Return (ft. Dice Raw & Wadud Ahmad) 2;24
17 Live @ WPFW, 1994 3:18


xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

To describe How I Got Over as the polar opposite of Game Theory or Rising Down would be very, very inaccurate. There's nothing light, happy, or chipper about How I Got Over. Actually, the subject matter is here is quite depressing. Black Thought and company talk about the adversity they are going through in life and their strive to rise above it. The first part of the album has Black Thought at rock bottom and he climbs further and further up as the album goes on. By the end of the album, he has found a new sense of determination and a refusal to surrender to his demons. See, he got over....get it? Hyuck hyuck hyuck.....uhhh, let's move on. The criticism that Black Thought sounds lazy here doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Considering the depressing concept and subject matter of this album, Black Thought's energy here is a perfect fit. Black Thought in Phrenology or Illadelph Halflife mode on an album like this would sound fucked up in twenty different ways and just wouldn't make any sense. I wouldn't call this my favorite Black Thought performance, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with his rapping here. I also really enjoyed the guests here too. After listening to Phonte's verses, I have to ask why the hell he wants to give up rapping. Peedi Peedi was excellent as well. This Sugar Tongue Slim dude is new to me, but I enjoyed him here. For me though, the standout guest is Blu. He was incredibly nice here. And finally, Dice Raw's singing. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't sing as good as he raps. They made his singing kinda work, but he shouldn't give up rapping anytime soon.

The sound that ?uestlove and crew decided to go with for How I Got Over is a much more mellow sound (especially compared to Rising Down) that's really easy to digest. This is the most mellow that the Roots have ever been. But in order to keep things from getting too mellow, ?uestlove hits you with super crisp drumming throughout the album. Again, on the kind of album they strived to make this, production like this fits perfectly. And besides that, the production in its own right is damn good. The kind of production the Roots cooked up is really pleasant and made me feel good by the end of the album. And finally, those sung hooks. When it comes to hooks, I'm indifferent to them 80% of the time. I admit that hooks sometimes make or break songs for me, but more often than not I take them as a break between verse than as a super important part of a song (whether sung, scratched, chanted, or whatever). As far as these hooks are concerned, not only did they not break the songs, they added to the pleasant feeling I got from this album. I wouldn't want How I Got Over without those hooks, despite Dice Raw's less than pefect singing and Joanna Newsom's weird ass voice.

There's pretty much nothing wrong with How I Got Over. It's a very pleasant album that's beautifully conceived/sequenced that doesn't demand a lot of your time. However, it doesn't get a perfect score because it lacks that certain punch (and by punch I don't mean energy) that almost every other Roots album has that propels them into classic territory. Besides Roots fans, I don't know which other hip-hop demographic this would appeal to. The mellow sound of this album isn't comparable to any other "mellow" or "smooth" hip-hop album I can think of. Yet another excellent album from the best hip-hop group in existance (yeah yeah, I'm jockin' these guys real bad, but I don't care!). Can't wait to see what they do for album #10!




<a href="https://www.imagenetz.de/g2jkS">   The Roots - How I Got Over </a> 276mb (flac   10)

01 A Peace of Light 1:50
02 Walk Alone 3:54
03 Dear God 2.0 3:51
04 Radio Daze 4:16
05 Now or Never 4:34
06 How I Got Over 3:33
07 DillaTUDE: The Flight of Titus 0:42
08 The Day 3:44
09 Right On 3:36
10 Doin' It Again 2:23
11 The Fire 3:41
12 Tunnel Vision 0:40
13 Web 20/20 2:46
14 Hustla [bonus track] 2:56

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

Wake Up!’s success comes from its reinterpretation of politically-charged soul songs throughout the 1960s and 1970s. If any band in the world is going to take up a project like this and succeed beyond anyone’s expectations, it is going be the Roots. And they do succeed. Oh yeah, and having John Legend’s voice on-hand only helps recreate a neo-soul album for the 21st century.

The album begins with a demand to do exactly that—announcing the “Hard Times” we live in today, just as we lived in when Baby Huey and the Babysitters included it on their 1971 album. John Legend and the Roots forces us to pay attention, through the aid of the aggressive horns and the incredibly catchy drum-snaps by ?uestlove. Legend plays to his soulful, emotive vocal strengths in the second track, “Compared to What.” The Roots add fantastic descending horns and a sick rhythm section led by a sick bass line (via Owen Biddle I assume) that tie the song together neatly. “Wake Up Everybody” sounds time-appropriate in its instrumentation—less of a reinterpretation and less of an attempt to make contemporary—but works well as a reminder of the album’s intent, of looking back to remember the fire we felt in the 1960s and 1970s when soul was at its heyday and people in music were more interested in making a difference than making a paycheck.

Black Thought’s lack of inclusion on the album hurts it a bit. Even though I enjoy John Legend on this record, the Roots would have played more to their strengths if they had Black Thought giving us a few more of his verses. His political lyrics fit the project like a glove[ii] and Wake Up!’s ambition could have been fulfilled more completely if Black Thought added his own ideas to these classic soul covers, making them feel even more 21st century hip-hop than they already are on Wake Up! More hip-hop would have worked well—it does on “Little Ghetto Boy,” “Hard Times,” and Common’s verse on “Wake Up Everybody.” Songs like the Marvin Gaye cover “Wholly Holy” might have been more exciting listens with Black Thought manning some vocal duties. At the very least, when Black Thought is on the album, he is on. ?uestlove’s hip-hop style drumming also really invigorates the album with the neo-soul it has when it is at its best.

John Legend’s best vocal performance comes on the incredibly funky “Hang on in There,” which provides a fantastic-in-its-repetition string section harkening the old styles of song-writing. I’m surprised when John Legend throws the falsetto in on the reggae-style of “Humanity (Love the Way it Should Be)” and it works—it works very well! None of us should be surprised because Legend is an incredibly talented singer, but the aesthetic is different on this song than it is on the rest of the album. “Humanity” contains less soul and more Caribbean, though no less soul when it comes to feeling on this Lincoln Thompson cover.

The duo of Bill Withers’ “I Can’t Write Left Handed” and Nina Simone’s “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free” are an interesting one-two punch of epic-length guitar solos and guitar gospel-flavored pop. Captain Kirk Douglass plays the best guitar of his career thus far on the prior track, while the latter has Legend playing to his strengths in the Nina Simone cover. These two songs are the strongest tracks on the entire album, and should be considered for many musiczines’ end-year list for best covers, or better yet, best songs. They fell true, and contain that punch political songs should have.

“Shine,” a John Legend original, ends the album. The song is fairly strong, but it acts as-is as more of a second epilogue after the upbeat and stronger track in “I Wish I knew How It Would Feel to Be Free.” Maybe “Shine” would have been better somewhere in the middle of the track listing, kind of how Bob Dylan snuck original material in his cover-heavy debut album. This suggestion comes because though “Shine” is a strong song, it doesn’t necessarily end things on a high point, which “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free.”



<a href="https://multiup.org/bbe54e124fed649f5bb8f142b3295543"> John Legend & The Roots - Wake Up! </a> (flac min 437mb)

01 Hard Times 5:16
02 Compared to What 6:27
03 Wake Up Everybody 4:25
04 Our Generation (The Hope of the World) 3:16
05 Little Ghetto Boy (Prelude) 1:59
06 Little Ghetto Boy 5:26
07 Hang on in There 7:15
08 Humanity (Love the Way It Should Be) 3:49
09 Wholy Holy 5:50
10 I Can't Write Left Handed 11:54
11I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free 2:43
12 Shine 4:44

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx  

The Roots' umpteenth album is titled after a Guess Who song mutilated by countless lounge bands since 1969. It incorporates a Sufjan Stevens recording, mixtape-style, for the purpose of starting a four-part instrumental suite that closes a program lasting only 40 minutes. Based on those details, it would not be irrational to think that the band’s well of inspiration might be dry or tainted. While the well might be slightly tainted, it is full. Undun is based on the life of Redford Stephens, a fictional product of inner-city New York who was born in the mid-‘70s and tragically passed in 1999, the point at which the album begins -- with a quiet EKG flatline. Appearances from MCs Big K.R.I.T., Dice Raw, Phonte, Greg Porn, and Truck North, as well as contributions by singers Aaron Earl Livingston and Bilal, flank principal voice Black Thought, yet this is no hip-hop opera or anything close to a typical concept album. The existential rhymes, seemingly created with a shared vision, avoid outlining specific events and focus on ruminations that are grave and penetrating, as if each vocalist saw elements of himself and those he has known in Redford. What’s more, Undun probably shatters the record for fewest proper nouns on a rap album, with the likes of Hammurabi, Santa Muerte, and Walter Cronkite mentioned rather than the names of those who are physically involved in Stephens’ life. (The album’s app, filled with video clips and interviews with Stephens’ aunt, teachers, and peers, provides much more typical biographical information.) Musically, Undun flows easier and slower than any other Roots album. The backdrops ramp up with slight gradations, from soft collisions of percussion and keys (“Sleep”), to balmy gospel-soul (“Make My”), to Sunday boom-bap (“One Time”). There's a slight drop into sinewy funk (“Kool On”) that leads into a sustained stretch of stern, hunched-shoulder productions, highlighted by the crisply roiling “Lighthouse,” that match the cold realism of the lyrics. The strings in the slightly wistful “I Remember” and completely grim “Tip the Scale” are a setup for the Redford suite, which is nothing like padding. It glides through the movements, involving mournful strings, a violent duel between drummer ?uestlove and guest pianist D.D. Jackson, and a lone death note that fades 37 seconds prior to silence.


                                            
<a href="https://mir.cr/HKTR6JHH"> The Roots - Undun </a> (flac  242mb)

1 Dun 1:17
2 Sleep 2:16
3 Make My 4:27
4 One Time 3:56
5 Kool On 3:49
6 The OtherSide 4:03
7 Stomp 2:23
8 Lighthouse 3:44
9 I Remember 3:15
10 Tip the Scale 4:18
Redford Suite
11 Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou) 1:52
12 Possibility (2nd Movement) 0:55
13 Will to Power (3rd Movement) 1:04
14 Finality (4th Movement) 1:31

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx

The Roots album graced by a Romare Bearden collage is less than half the length of each studio set the group released from 1995 through 2002. It might be the one that requires the most deep listening to absorb. Part of that can be attributed to the array of voices, or characters -- the widest variety of Roots guests yet. Given that, as well as the collage-like insertion of three preexisting recordings, Framed as conceptual, it's an examination of self-destructive cycles with materialism, god, and the devil all factors as much as any of the instrumentalists. In a way, it's one facet of the Roots in severely concentrated form. Black Thought, as ever, sharply portrays a man trying to make the most out of suffocating circumstances. He enters on the creeping dread of "Never," a song that also features Patty Crash in singing Talky Tina mode, with "I was born faceless in a oasis/Folks disappear here and leave no traces." On the following "When the People Cheer," he's even more penetrating and provocative, "Searchin' for physical pleasure if I don't go mental first." Those songs, along with the harder-hitting "Black Rock" and "Understand," are child's play relative to what follows. The album pivots on a jarring minute-length extract from experimental composer Michel Chion's "Requiem." Then, a chilling piano-and-strings ballad fronted by Mercedes Martinez stammers and slips into chaos. Over casually tense drums and piano, "The Dark (Trinity)" involves Black Thought, Dice Raw, and Greg Porn, who blur the line between boastful and despondent; Dice Raw's verse, where he wonders how he went from lusting after Jordans to wanting one of his "bitches" to get an abortion, is coldest of all. "The Unraveling" is a dejected shuffle -- proper support for Raheem DeVaughn's conflicting thoughts of rebirth and emptiness -- with a lullaby break. DeVaughn continues to lead on the finale, "Tomorrow," a sonically sprightly number that can be taken as sarcastic, from the whistled intro to the singer's "I'm thankful to be alive, 'cause you sleep from eleven to seven, and work hard from nine to five." When it seems like the simple and chipper rhythm is about to fade away, the piano switches course and shifts into one of the most gorgeous melodies heard on any Roots album. It crash-lands, abruptly ending an album that, depending on the amount of time spent with it, will seem either fragmentary and hollow or fathoms deep -- either a trifle or among the group's most remarkable work.




<a href="http://depositfiles.com/files/bizuz4rbq"> The Roots - ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin </a> (flac  169mb)

01 Theme From the Middle of the Night 1:27
02 Never 3:54
03 When the People Cheer 3:01
04 The Devil 0:38
05 Black Rock 2:41
06 Understand 2:50
07 Dies Irae 1:07
08 The Coming 3:01
09 The Dark (Trinity) 5:17
10 The Unraveling 4:20
11 Tomorrow 5:06

xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx xxxxx