Published on May 29, 1999
Last year, Lauryn Hill declared, “I treat this like my thesis,”
in her blockbuster
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. So, in the spirit of
one-upsmanship, the band The Roots did one better this year. With
their latest album,
Things Fall Apart, the band goes as far as to add footnotes
in their liner notes about the origins of each of their songs.
It’s a neat gesture but it is by far not a novelty.
Things Fall Apart wastes no time in persuading the listener
that he or she is listening to an “important album.” The album
opens up with a snipit from the Spike Lee film,
Mo Better Blues, in which a debate rages on about the lack
of support blacks give to blues and jazz performers. Another voice
criticizes the music industry for crudely marketing rap albums as
merely product, not art. In essence, rap albums are not utilized.
Take note, No Limit Records, this attack may be partially directed
at you.
The Roots already have an advantage over most of the rap acts
out there: they mostly rely on live instruments. The jazzy upright
bass and the full drumming style of ?uestlove give immediate impact
on every track on
Things Fall Apart.
Like A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots are more interested in
broadening listeners’ minds rather than extending their wallets.
And much like Quest, The Roots are not afraid to experiment. While
the may feel at home in a jazz club, spouting off poetry, they are
not afraid to show off their tougher image. In the mystic “Step
Into The Relm,” The Roots do a better Wu-Tang song than the band
did on most of the tracks off their last double album.
The band effortlessly hops from different genres in
Things Fall Apart. The album closes (well, aside from the
hidden track) with a poetry slam with the band laying down a
somber, moody backdrop. In “You Got Me,” Erykah Badu gives a
sooting voice over to a relationship that disintegrates as fast as
it bloomed. It is one of the most dead honest songs written about
relationships in the past few years. The moral to the song: neither
one was at fault for the failure, things just fell apart.
Though some of the songs in
Things Fall Apart are rooted in sadness, it doesn’t stop
making it the best album of the year so far to listen to with your
windows down in your car on a beautiful summer day. “Dynamite!,”
“100% Dundee” and “The Next Movement” are fun, funky numbers that
will resonate with nearly anyone with even a hint of feeling from
their waist down.
Being a compulsive list maker, I can’t help but compare the
hip-hop/rap movement of the past few years with the heavy metal
movement about a decade ago. Just as people then thought heavy
metal was dead, three albums seemingly rescued the genre from
extinction:
Appetite For Destruction by Guns N’ Roses,
Master Of Puppets by Metallica and, for pop metal’s sake,
Hysteria by Def Leppard. Those three albums showed that
metal could be commercially viable as well as add an undeniable
artistic integrity to them.
In the same way, rap, though commercially viable, has come under
attack by purists and narrow-minded critics for being nothing more
than bass-filler albums that do nothing more than pump empty ideas
into listeners’ ears. With
The Miseducaiton Of Lauryn Hill, Outkast’s
Aquemini and
Things Fall Apart, that argument has been silenced. Three
different landmark albums, each one no doubt will stand the test of
time for years to come.