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The Roots had solely simply began to do numbers. In 2002, the Philadelphia band was practically a decade faraway from the discharge of Organix, the indie debut that they’d recorded in London. That album received the Roots signed to Geffen. The Roots received consideration for being a full-on band fairly than a rappers-plus-turntables group, and their dwell present blew minds. Critics liked the Roots, partly for the ways in which they diverged from ’90s rap orthodoxy. But the band members had been annoyed as a result of they didn’t assume the rap neighborhood took them significantly or handled them as friends. Eventually, the Roots discovered their very own neighborhood, and that made all of the distinction.
By the time the Roots launched their landmark Things Fall Apart in 1999, the band was on the heart of a thriving circle of artists who dubbed themselves the Soulquarians. Post-Native Tongues rappers like Common, Talib Kweli, and the person now often called Yasiin Bey discovered widespread floor with the Roots. So did rap-conversant R&B singers like D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and Jill Scott. These artists grew to become their very own thriving subculture. D’Angelo and Badu grew to become stars, and each of them collaborated closely with Roots drummer and bandleader Questlove. So did Common, who managed to push his strategy to one thing resembling stardom as soon as he linked up with the Soulquarians. Many of these allies contributed to Things Fall Apart, the album that also stands because the deepest, richest doc of what the Roots might do. On the energy of the Roots’ rising cachet and the hit Erykah Badu collab “You Got Me,” Thing Fall Apart went gold and, years later, platinum. The Roots had constructed up some cultural capital. With Phrenology, they spent it.
Even after the success of Things Fall Apart, the Roots discovered themselves in some degree of stress and disarray. The band had shed members like rappers Dice Raw and the late Malik B and human-beatbox wizard Rahzel. Scott Storch, the Roots’ long-gone unique keyboardist, was already making a reputation for himself as a producer of massively profitable pop hits. The dysfunction wouldn’t cease with Phrenology, both; shortly after the album’s launch, guitarist Ben Kenney, who’d solely simply joined up, would go away the Roots to affix Incubus — most likely a sound monetary resolution on Kenney’s half.
Pared right down to a tighter lineup, with only one rapper within the type of the masterful technician Black Thought, the Roots tried to distance themselves from the neo-soul zeitgeist that they’d helped to create. Instead, they needed Phrenology to showcase one thing nearer to the anything-goes depth of their dwell present. The Roots settled in for greater than two years of jam classes at New York’s Electric Lady Studios, and the album slowly started to take form. You can hear them striving for one thing extra visceral within the bare-bones stomp of “Rock You,” the album’s first correct music. That music’s hook is about so simple as it will get. It’s simply Black Thought repeating the road “we will rock you” time and again. Then, as if to show Black Thought proper, the Roots launch straight into “!!!!!!!,” a frantic 24-second burst of Bad Brains-style hardcore.
“!!!!!!!” isn’t a terrific hardcore music or something, but it surely’s an announcement of intent: For the Roots, nothing is off the desk. Over the remainder of the album, the Roots delve into guttural funk, chaotic free-jazz skree, incendiary spoken-word poetry, and hammering hip-house. The album could make for a fractured, disorienting pay attention, but it surely performs that approach for a cause. The Roots named Phrenology after the disgraced faux science of racial essentialism — the concept Black individuals are one way or the other dumber or weaker than white individuals, as decided by bullshit like head form. In casting their internet large, the Roots claimed all these totally different types as Black music — which, in any case, is what they’re.
Some of the tracks on Phrenology are among the many finest within the Roots’ deep catalog. For a few years, Black Thought had a rep as a technically impeccable rapper with out a lot persona, however his upright dependability has ultimately come to seem like its personal form of star energy, and “Thought @ Work” is among the all-time nice paperwork of that energy at work. The three-part, 10-minute epic “Water” is an expressive love letter to departed bandmate Malik B, whose habit points had been already unravelling his life. The thumping home anthem “Thirsty!,” a hidden monitor when the album first got here out, simply bangs exhausting. And the sprawl of Phrenology is a strong assertion in its personal proper. The album may not dangle collectively in addition to Things Fall Apart, however its messiness is a function, not a bug.
Unfortunately, that messiness doesn’t lengthen to the lead single. “Break You Off,” a collaboration with the rising neo-soul singer Musiq Soulchild, looks like an affordable try and recapture what the Roots had with “You Got Me,” proper right down to the drum-‘n’-bass break on the finish of the monitor. “Break You Off” isn’t a dangerous music, but it surely’s a complete lot extra staid and protected than the remainder of the album. It doesn’t have the emotive storytelling of “You Got Me,” and it stands as a chief instance of why Black Thought shouldn’t try loverman pop-rap. “Break You Off” is the one Hot 100 hit on Phrenology, and it solely made it to #99.
But if second single “The Seed (2.0)” didn’t make the charts, it nonetheless stands as the most effective songs that the Roots ever recorded. Earlier in 2002, the mercurial Los Angeles musician Cody ChesnuTT had come out with The Headphone Masterpiece, a sprawling self-released double CD that he’d recorded at residence on a four-track in his bed room. The Roots introduced ChesnuTT in to document a brand new model of his music “The Seed,” including their very own crisp precision and a few locked-in Black Thought verses. “The Seed (2.0)” is basically extra of a Cody ChesnuTT monitor than a Roots one, however the Roots gave ChesnuTT’s music the readability and power that it wanted. “The Seed (2.0)” was a much bigger hit overseas than at residence — #2 in Denmark! — but it surely now sits proper behind “You Got Me” on the record of the Roots’ most-streamed songs. Maybe individuals simply wanted a while to catch up.
The summer season after Phrenology got here out, I noticed the Roots headline Baltimore’s AFRAM Festival, an enormous free present devoted to Black artists. I’ve been to a lot of Roots exhibits over time. I’ve seen them at golf equipment, faculty auditoriums, outside competition levels, big theaters. They’ve all the time been nice, and so they’ve all the time left crowds’ heads spinning. But I’ve by no means seen band and crowd feed off of one another the way in which they did that evening. Tens of 1000’s of individuals should’ve come out to AFRAM, and when Cody ChesnuTT stepped onstage to sing “The Seed (2.0),” all of us should’ve levitated. That evening, it didn’t matter what number of copies Phrenology may’ve bought. Some issues are greater than numbers.
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