May 13, 2008 @ 4:00 pm

The Roots, "Rising Down"

by: Keith Murphy

The hardest-working band in the rap business.

Here’s a billing that gives record-label suits nightmares: political album.

Apparently someone forgot to tell Philadelphia hip hop stalwarts the Roots to care what the stuffed shirts think. For their 10th album, Rising Down, the hardest-working band in the rap business is not much for appeasing the Def Jam machine. Not when they’re opening up this defiant release with a paranoid title track that examines environmental strife and society’s crippling reliance on technology and pharmaceutical drugs. “I don’t wanna floss,” Black Thought hopelessly admits, “I done lost my passion.”

If that little ray of sunshine wasn’t enough, the somber guitar tapestry of “Criminal” steadies the Roots’ indictment of a government that gets away with murder while lesser offenders bear the burden. Thought laments: “All the petty crime took a toll on me / I look around and my homies is getting old on me.” And yet, the Roots and their talented co-conspirators remind you that this is indeed a S-U-P-A MC album disguised as conceptual, socially conscious art, even down to the interludes, which feature Thought, at 15 years old, ripping fire-breathing freestyles.

Despite its nightmarish invocations, Rising Down bangs like no Roots work since their popular, populist breakthrough Things Fall Apart (MCA, 1999). Sinister synthesizers—utilized unevenly on 2006’s Game Theory (Def Jam)—are put to startling use over band leader ?uestlove’s violent drum arrangements on “Get Busy,” a Philly confab featuring Dice Raw, Peedi Crack, and G.O.A.T. DJ Jazzy Jeff. Its localized wallop is remarkable, punishing stuff.

There are loads more cameos, too, from on-again, off-again Roots member Malik B to confident newcomer Porn. But the group would have cleared the bases by wrapping things up with the hopeful, go-go-flavored celebration “Rising Up,” backed by the gorgeous vocals of Chrisette Michelle and Washington D.C. rapper Wale. Instead, they close with an actual 1994 phone face-off between the band and a former label rep over what they see as a lack of album support (just par for the course in the Roots’ uncompromising world). Being beat over the head with record-industry politics can be a drag, especially when the rest of the album aims so high.

Still, the Roots rise above on this album, bravely pushing themselves at every turn, proving, in an era full of froth and fancy, that sometimes nightmares are the most important kind of dreams.

Article tags: Revolutions, The Roots