Fear, My Dear

The Roots pitch and roll through treacherous waters.

by J. Edward Keyes

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Published: Apr 29, 2008

WANT MORE? The characters who populate Rising Down are bitter and disenfranchised, burned out from blown opportunities, battling bad instincts and routinely betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect them. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Roughly one year ago this week, Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, drummer, chief conceptualist and, for all intents and purposes, the face (or, perhaps more specifically, the hair) for the Roots was on his way from Buffalo to Philadelphia, returning from a string of shows that left him slightly exhausted but flush with cash. That last detail, as it turned out, would be a problem. When an overeager member of Buffalo's airport security discovered the hefty financial yield from ?uestlove's performances, he did the only "sensible" thing: He called the DEA.

The next hour or so, as Thompson furiously recounted on his blog, was depressing, humiliating and fueled by appalling racism. The DEA agent questioned what a "man like him" was doing with so much cash. They questioned his choice of handbag — Louis Vuitton — and his choice of headgear — a knit Rastafarian cap.

The worst part, though, came near the end. When Thompson explained that he was the drummer for a Grammy-winning hip-hop band, the officer snatched away his copy of XXL and asked, "Where are you in this magazine? You said you were in a rap group. How can a rapper not be in a rap magazine?" Explaining that the Roots were a different kind of rap group only sent the officer clutching for Rolling Stone: "Are you in here, then? Can you sing one of your songs? I'm confused. You say you're in a rap group that has three Grammys, you travel with all this money on your person, yet you can't produce your face in any of these books you carry?"

Therein, albeit blown out to a dramatic extreme, lies the strange dilemma of the Roots. It's a rap group that isn't really a rap group, a rock group that isn't quite a rock group. They've received enough acclaim to generate routine buzz, but not enough to keep them regularly in print. At this point in their lifespan they should be selling records to the same people who read MOJO and buy Led Zeppelin and Sly Stone remasters, but they haven't quite penetrated that sphere. Above all else they're respected and, unfortunately, there is no greater commercial poison than "respect."

This is a colossal frustration because, 15 years into their career, the Roots remain one of most inventive, challenging and rewarding groups in all of popular music. They are one of the few who have never made a bad record, and one of the fewer still who approach each new album with a sense of fascination, possibility and very particular purpose. Their early outings, specifically Do You Want More?!!!??! and Illadelph Halflife, were defined by twinkling keys and ambling, jazzy arrangements. They still sound sturdy, but not particularly remarkable. The group's evolution began with 1999's Things Fall Apart, a record that took more aggressive approach toward reconstructing the Roots' sonic template. It also yielded them the closest thing they've ever had to a hit single, the Erykah Badu collaboration "You Got Me."

Since then, each Roots record has been a little better than the one before it (and this includes 2004's absurdly maligned The Tipping Point, which is about as much a crossover record as Taxi Driver is a slapstick comedy). They reached a creative pinnacle with 2006's astonishing Game Theory, a record wherein searing soul sat side by side with hazy jazz and grim, acidic rave. It's as close to Fear of a Black Planet or There's a Riot Goin' On as this generation is likely to get, and the fact that it slunk down the sales charts without so much as a whimper is an especially bitter heartbreak.

The Roots' latest record, Rising Down, it must be said, does not better its predecessor. Instead, it expands upon its general themes, plunging further down and deeper in and allowing that record's mild suspicions to develop into full-on, sweaty, heart-racing paranoia. The songs sound meaner and more agitated, running on an overpowering queasiness that will not abate or subside. It's the sonic equivalent of being tied to a chair in an enormous, frigid warehouse when somebody suddenly shoots out the lights.

That analogy makes it sound like the record isn't a whole lot of fun and, truth be told, it's not. What it is, though, is visionary and spellbinding, two qualities that have a funny way of trumping plain old "fun" when the chips are tallied. Other groups as far along in their career as the Roots are have a tendency to think musical development means larding their songs with unnecessary flourishes, like gospel choirs and million-piece string sections. The Roots do something far braver: They whittle their songs down. The bulk of Rising Down is constructed around ?uestlove's thwacking drums, Black Thought's parched, aggravated delivery and a sickening smear of synthesizer. Ten years from now, they might not even need that much.

Fittingly, the album opens with an argument. Over a remorseful pulse of keyboard, a discussion about a record label's shoddy treatment of the group gradually spirals out of control. Black Thought starts shouting, the label starts shouting back, ?uestlove tries in vain to calm them both, and the whole thing erupts in a terrifying squall of reverb. This turns out to be a good indication of what's coming: The characters who populate Rising Down are bitter and disenfranchised, burned out from blown opportunities, battling bad instincts and routinely betrayed by the people who were supposed to protect them. There are suicide bombers, high school shooters, drug addicts and crooked cops, all of them looking over their shoulders with fingers on triggers.

Unlike Game Theory, Rising Down takes a while to get going. Its first few tracks are more circle than pounce, but it rights itself remarkably in the second half. From about the midpoint onward (a moment I have to believe ?uestlove would like us to refer to as "the start of Side Two"), Rising Down becomes a dense thicket of gauzy electronics, tumbling drums and elegiac soul hooks. Like most Roots albums, what's gripping about Rising Down is its sonic architecture; the record finds equal space for hypnotic, interlocking guitar patterns and blank, robotic tuba. The only other band as consistently fascinated with the possibilities of sound, and who use that curiosity to fuel inimitable songwriting, is Radiohead.

The record comes to a feverish head in "I Can't Help It." Illuminated by haphazard flashes of synthesizer and wobbly with off-kilter percussion, the song quakes and pitches until Peedi Crakk steps in to deliver what could be Rising Down's nut graf: "I never said I'm ready to die, but I accept it/ I don't even know when it's coming, but I expect it/ Lost all semblance of hope, and now I'm left with/ Nervous conditions, addictions, in addition to/ Vixens that mixed in/ With the wrong crowd/ My life's on a flight that's going down/ My mother had an abortion for the wrong child." Shock and awe, indeed.

Like any good sermon on the apocalypse, Rising Down ends with a benediction. Long Island vocalist Chrisette Michelle provides the hook: "Yesterday I saw a big girl crying, I walked up and asked what's wrong/ She told me the radio's been playing the same song all day long." The second she's done, Black Thought comes forward to claim the prize: "Get your glass and lift it up in a toast position/ We're getting paper like John Travolta did it/ 'Cause we focused with it/ We supposed to get it." It's an optimistic scenario, one that imagines a group being rewarded for commitment to vision, consistency and plain old hard work with a prize greater than mere "respect." If Rising Down has taught us anything, it's a scenario we know better than to expect.

(j_keyes@citypaper.net)

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