Album Review : The Roots - How I Got Over
- Written by Jim Merrett
Still the smartest, most engaging hip-hop act out there, The Roots continue to prove that the genre doesn’t have to be about lazily lifting and regurgitating breaks. Sure, they borrow threads from elsewhere – although they have the nous to make them less-than-glaringly-obvious, adding to the appeal for cut-spotting nerds – but the beating heart of the collective is always ?uestlove’s thundering percussion, making this more of a “band” experience than the limited nature most rap outfits impose on themselves.
How I Got Over – studio album number nine – might numerically continue where Rising Down left off (the band has numbered their album tracks chronologically since they began, although digital formatting made it difficult for me to check in this instance), but this is a different beast. Wiry, clocking in at just over 40 minutes, it’s also perhaps lighter in tone – said to be reflecting a sense of relief following the fall of the Bush administration, although it turns out there’s still a lot to get worked up about – and more immediate than the last two Def Jam outings, it could still kill a mood in certain circles. Catchy in places, a party album it isn’t.
Alongside drummer ?uestlove, frontman Black Thought forms the core of the band, but it’s a revolving door policy that keeps them fresh. Although the lauded Pharoahe Monch appearance fails to materialise, the storming Dice Raw and Peedi Peedi return, also joined by Truck North and the Google-stumping P.O.R.N. and new faces Blu and STS. But prior to release, it was the collaborations with names from outside the hip-hop fold that generated excitement. There was the odd hook-up with Fall Out Boy during the sessions of the last album, and here members of Monsters of Folk – reprising their own ‘Dear God’ with ‘Dear God 2.0’, which doesn’t go as far as questioning faith but does cut the Holy Father down to the size of glossy mag celebs – and the Dirty Projectors. A star turn also comes from Joanna Newsom, battling some savage drum-battering armed only with her cooing voice and harp.
How I Got Over opens with a woozy, female-led harmony piece but gets down to business pretty sharp with ‘Walk Alone’, which rightly suggests the band are to take an introspective detour. Alongside ‘Dear God 2.0’, retro-sounding soul-number ‘Now Or Never’ ties the album together, but the centrepiece has to be the title track, where ringmaster Black Thought is happy for Raw Dice to take over, encouraged by his backing vocals to semi-sing his piece.
The band’s ability to showcase young talent coming up from the streets of Philadelphia not only invigorates the sound, it allows The Roots to retread their old stomping ground without sounding stuck in their ways. Despite the success of the band and the change of government, their stance against social inequality holds without losing its pertinence and they still sound connected, if a world away from the current state of commercial hip-hop. And if “He” is also responsible for the poverty, injustice, economic fall-out and natural disasters the band has to work with here, we at least have God to thank for that.