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No Guarantees
03/09/1999 5:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Billy Johnson Jr
The Roots' fourth album entered the charts as the fourth most popular record in the country on Feb. 23, but the occasion wasn't really as joyous as one would expect.
Sure, the hip-hop collective's 1996 album Illadelph Halflife only peaked at No. 21, 1995's Do You Want More never surpassed No. 104, and 1993's Organix didn't even register on the top 200. So the rave response to this year's Things Fall Apart is a major feat. But the album's five different album covers signal issues that supercede record sales and pompous celebrity status.
Imagine what's behind the blank stare and lone tear of the poverty-stricken Somalian child, bloodied hand holding an Ace Of Spades, terrified blacks running from police dogs, aftermath of a church burning, or crying infant abandoned in a demolished Chinese city.
When coupling these five equally gripping cover art images with the album title Things Fall Apart, group members Black Thought, ?uestlove, Malik B, Hub, Kamal and Rahzel The Godfather Of Noyze make their point. Stressing that things cannot be taken for granted because "nothing lasts forever," lead rapper Black Thought says such hip-hop parallels are inevitable.
"You can look at hip-hop as that village," Black Thought says of the ravished Nigerian village in the 1958 Chinua Achebe text Things Fall Apart, after which the Roots' album is named. "Colonialism as commercialism. You can look at it as materialism. It just changed the current of traditional hip-hop. Maybe we took it for granted and it happened right under our noses."
It was actually a line from Big Daddy Kane's "Raw" that moved the Roots to use their album title and artwork to make this serious statement about hip-hop. "We made the parallel on the tour bus, reading a Big Daddy Kane article where he was reflecting on how hip-hop has changed," explains the Afro-pick-wearing ?uestlove. "This is a man who said he'll be damned if he ever let a Fisher Price MC hang. And now hip-hop is run by nothing but Fisher Price MCs."
So all the radio and video airplay the album's lead single, "You Got Me" (featuring Erykah Badu), has received doesn't necessarily mean that the Roots have achieved a level of comfort in the music industry. The success can be viewed as an aftershock of the warm soul stylings from Lauryn Hill and OutKast or the brewing excitement surrounding D'Angelo's return, but since a core fanbase has been rooting for the Roots' live-band blend of jazz and hip-hop since 1993, the group understands that part of the recent response comes from casual, passerby fans.
"I mean, it's popular because it sounds different," says Black Thought of "You Got Me"'s rich guitars, bluesy chorus and conversational rhymes. "It's real, individual music by the artist. It's self-expressive. You've got to be original or else."
The makeup of Things Fall Apart supports Black Thought's statement. "You Got Me" is clearly the most commercially viable song on the album. Other collabs come in the form of more underground offerings: "Act Two (Love Of My Life)" features Common delivering a second installment to his hip-hop classic "I Used To Love H.E.R.," and Brooklyn's noted underground rapper MC Mos Def adds an edge to "Double Trouble."
So, is it a coincidence that the Philadelphia group's brand of hip-hop finally caught on? Possibly. But the response--no matter how strong--will not prompt the Roots to abandon their retro acoustic sound to milk commercial vehicles.
"I'm not willing to compromise the artistry," Black Thought insists, "or take anything away from the craft just for the sake of commercial viability."
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