The Roots

What a concert, what a night. A bit of background for those of you that aren't familiar with The Roots, they are a hip hop group out of Philadelphia. They formed in 1987 and since then have toured worldwide, spending up to 250 days a year on tour. The Roots is a crew consisting of many members, many or all of whom have at one time or another embarked on solo projects or projects with other artists. The core of the group is formed of Drummer and Musical Director Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, MC Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter, Bassist Leonard "Hub" Hubbard, Keyboard player James "Kamal" Gray, Guitarist Kirk "Captain Kirk" Douglas, percussionist Frank "Knuckles" Walker, Beat box Rahzel "The Godfather" Noyze and Human Turntablist Scratch. Many artists have appeared with The Roots as guests, including Erykah Badu and Jill Scott.
On Friday night, the first six members listed above appeared, along with female vocals provided by Maimouna Youssef. Although it was a shame to miss Scratch or Rahzel's beatbox pyrotechnics, it didn't diminish the group's impact at all, not by any means. Now this is no standard act. Already they stand head and shoulders above other hip hop acts out there by virtue of the fact that this is all organic, real live music. And it's not about the ego, or the bling, or the bitches, or whatever. It's about the music, about expression, about eloquence. They come out on stage and are somehow like something from another time or place, it's cliche I know but they are larger than life. There is such a humility about them. Despite the fact that they are some of the most talented musicians I have ever seen or heard, live or not, the fact that they've been doing this for eighteen years now and the fact that they work so damned hard, they are so down to earth. The arena, the venue they were playing at, had to be one of the grottiest concert spaces, with some of the worst acoustics. Other artists would have been having some serious hissy fits. The Roots' sound technician is reputed to be one of the best in the business but despite that, and a lot of effort during the concert, the sound was very undefined, the vocals often being somewhat muffled by the rest of the instruments. The only comment made by Black Thought was towards the beginning of the show when he said something like, "there's no definition in this room, I'm losing my front and my sides". And that was it. They just got down to making the best of it and rocking the house.
Hip Hop as a genre, and especially how it is perceived by many, is far too small a box to put The Roots in. They are quite simply astounding musicians. Not once during the show(except of course before the encore) did the music stop. The entire show was integrated, from the moment they came on stage and started gently, building up and then exploding into "Web" from their latest album, "The Tipping Point", a vocal tour de force by Black Thought, focusing on his powerfully rhythmical MCing and easy eloquence. Forgive me for not remembering all the numbers and in which order they came but they performed material from their newer albums, such as "Stay Cool", "Don't say nuthin'", "I Don't Care" and "Somebody's Gotta Do It" from "The Tipping Point" and "The Seed(2.0)", "Break You Off", "Star" and "Thought @ Work" from Phrenology. They also worked in some classic Roots anthems such as "The Ultimate", "Proceed", "Love of My Life", "The Next Movement", "You Got Me" and "Essaywhuman?!???!!!". They rocked us with Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love", Salt and Pepa's "Push It", "Black Betty" and the Grandmaster Flash classic "Apache". Other artists and tunes referenced or used in bridging tracks included Beyonce's "Crazy In Love", that Ciara song(you know the one), and even "A Few Of My Favourite Things" from "The Sound Of Music".
It was fantastic, and I could go on and on about it but I'm sure you're getting bored already and I could also never do it justice in the telling. I just have to mention the senational solos, going up to ten minutes each, taken by all members of the band. Hub played an amazing, finger blistering bass solo, taking a theme and bringing it back rougher and rougher, but never breaking what must be THE coolest exterior in the business. Kamal showed us his skills on the keyboard in not only jazz but also a little burst of some very clean classical keyboard, ?uestlove and Frankie Knuckles battled it out on percussion, grinning all the while, and Captain Kirk accompanied Maimouda Youssef on a sensational, soulful, powerful blues number before taking a serious face melter of a solo! Yes, it was a great night and I just can't wait 'til I get the chance to see them live again, hopefully at a better venue. One more thing. To not mention once again what incredible artists and people these are would be to do them a great injustice. It was a true pleasure to see them on stage, having a great time, loving being there, loving making sweet music together. There really was a sense, maybe I'm making this up, but a sense that there was no ego, no bullshit, just a desire to get together and make something bigger than themselves, something that the audience would never forget. That they did. The sum of all the parts would have been enormous, but it was so much greater than that.
To cap it all off, at the end of the evening, after playing a two and a half hour set, instead of stepping off stage and taking a piece of our hearts, they stayed on stage to chat, hand out memorabilia(drum sticks, a playlist, Kamal's hoodie) and sign autographs. Amazing.