Not only one of the greatest hip hop albums in recent years, but one of the better soul discs as well (one could easily perch it alongside the socially conscious-leaning R&B classics of Wonder, Gaye and Mayfield), The Roots‘ ninth studio effort How I Got Over hits mind-melting brilliance in it’s every realism-dipped lyric, warm soul-baked groove and nod-worthy chorus, demanding anyone who, even for a split-second, flirted with the notion that being a late-night TV house band and schmoozing with Hollywood’s finest on a daily basis would somehow dilute the band’s work to slap themselves across the face as hard as possible for not knowing how The Roots roll.
And while Over‘s opening half, a consistently compelling five-cut streak of Recession Era-backed sunless introspection undoubtedly lands as the strongest portion of the album, it’s “Right On”, a cut housed in the disc’s more hope-filled latter half that has earned the most revisits from this corner of the Web.
Here, The Roots muscle up an interpolation of indie folk goddess Joanna Newsom‘s quirky “The Book of Right-On” (from her 2004 debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender), crafting an oh-so-smoove summery bob that edges weightlessness despite a heavy boom-bap drum foundation. Meanwhile, inspired by Newsom’s looped chipmunk squeaks to “shine a light on”, Black Thought oozes self-confidence, promising to “raise the bar though like Bridgette”.
If the first thing we had heard from Talib Kweli & Hi-Tek’s sophomore Reflection Eternal set Revolutions Per Minute was the slightly more radio-oriented Estelle collaboration “Midnight Hour”, we might have been a tad concerned that the much-praised duo’s comeback wasn’t going to be the deliciously underground-laced and thought-provoking lyric-focused affair we had been waiting a decade for. Hearing it after RE have already kept us entertained with a recent string of excellent pre-album leaks (“Back Again”, “In This World”, “Strangers (Paranoid)” and the HOT Jay Electronica, J. Cole & Mos Def-featured “Just Begun”) though, and we can better appreciate it’s more mainstream-leaning change of pace.
Centered around a reunion between lovers following Talib being on tour for months, “Midnight Hour” has the rapper and Estelle revving eachother up for the long-delayed sex-capades about to go down once he hits the door, as Hi-Tek cooks up a bouncy beat shuffle based around perkily chopped samples of The Shirelles’ 1961 classic “Mama Said”.
“He said ‘When you get home/ Unplug the phone/ The lights is off/ You know it’s on”, Kweli teases, while Estelle edges horny-fueled implosion awaiting his return, drawing on the blissful doo-wop harmonies of girl groups past to relate her inner-anticipation: “See I’ve been going crazy thinkin’ about you late night”.
Revolutions Per Minute drops in May. Pick up the duo’s The Re:Union mixtape here.
Ten months after being honored with a Pitchfork BNM tag for their contagious semi-politi-dance-rap juke anthem “Chi Don’t Dance” (memorable for it’s brow-arching line “MTV gave me ADD/ BET taught me to hate me” and a rowdy, Goodie Mob-referencing hook), Chicago trio BBU (Bin Laden Blowin’ Up) try to prove that they’re no one (blog-)hit wonders with the release of their cleverly-titled mixtape, Fear of a Clear Channel Planet.
Out of it’s thirteen-cut tracklisting, the one that’s sure to earn them even more Web-hype in the coming months is set highlight “Black n’ Plastic”, a dishing of occasionally cutting “What’s happening to us?” cultural commentary (“Do you really love yourself?”, they ask to all the “GQ magazine, coke fiend cover girls/ And all them other girls that wanna look like other girls”) and potentially beef-starting digs at LMFAO, Asher Roth and Lil’ Wayne, served atop a surprisingly winning mix of sparse-ish Dirty South production tricks blended with an endlessly looped sample of Aqua’s ’90′s hit “Barbie Girl”.
Yeah…you read that right, they’ve sampled “BARBIE GIRL”…and the beat rocks (or, in their case, we guess jukes) somethin’ tough.
A buttery seduction of neo-soul smoove and cool poetic charm subtly fringed with old-school hip hop hype, Q Tip’s The Renaissance album cut “We Fight/ We Love”, like the rest of it’s trackmates, served as a welcome reminder of why Tip was so missed during that seemingly eternal between-album period.
Position nearly any aspect of it (from the vivid lyrical illustrations of it’s opening lines to the excellent second verse story of a young soldier’s tenure in Iraq (“You get to travel the world, its cheaper than college/ And you get guns, and you get knowledge/ Lookin for your soul, and WMD’s/ You can’t find nothing, cause its empty…”) to the way Tip’s relaxed flow nestles with such ease within it’s sublime groove) against about 90% of what’s currently being (over-)supported by your local rap station, and the gap in creativity presented is downright maddening.
What a sad world we live in when the beyond-corny club-pop exercises of Flo-Rida or instantly-tired frat-boy musings of “I Love College” represent to so many radio listeners what hip hop is while amazing gems like “Fight/ Love” struggle (usually unsuccessfully) for an inkling of airspace. Sigh.
Below, peep a performance of “We Fight/ We Love” from the Ellen show, then check out the remix featuring Tip’s cousin Consequence and the ever-busy Kanye West. Their appearance results in the sad omission of both original guest Raphael Saadiq and that aforementioned second verse, but the fact that West is actually rapping (YAAAAYYY!!!) here makes the changes less of a bummer.
Rhymefest, the Grammy winning co-writer of “Jesus Walks”, has woken up on the wrong side of the bed from the sounds of this Lil’ Jon-produced track, a glimpse of what’s to come on his second album, El Che.
Pushed by Jon to “put me in the mind of some Public Enemy” over militaristic marching drum beats and murder-minded synth basslines, Rhyme busts through the suffocated production spewing pissy frustration at the public’s general silliness. “All of us is killing our children/ Sold Myspace for $500 million/ Sold Youtube for $1.6 billion/ You in the projects fighting over a building,” Kanye’s buddy spits in inflamed ire, putting gangstas to shame by idolizing what he feels are the true hardcore (Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X). Later he mocks us for shedding more tears for Anna Nicole Smith, a “whore” he matter-of-factly proclaims, than the much more tragic casualties of the on-going war.
Amping up the battle rhyme precision and politically-based lyricism that prevailed on his acclaimed, but largely ignored, debut album, Blue Collar, “Angry Black Man…” finally adds a sense of depth lost in hip hop’s current rap/ rock revival. Forget “partying like a rock star”, it’s time to truly rebel like one, Rhymefest announces on this tense cut.
Growing funk/ soul sensation Kevin Michael brings attention back stateside for one of music’s most exciting new talents. The 23 year old singer-songwriter embodies the kind of early Prince/ Sly Stone sound we’ve craved since D’Angelo, Maxwell and Cody ChesnuTT all went into seclusion and is sure to make big waves in the future if his amazing debut single, “We All Want The Same Thing” is any indication of what this cat can come up with.
A backwoodsy, front porch groove establishes the setting early on for this subdued demand for change. Unifying the different social sects he inhabits in an effort for some sort of trans-racial revolution (“All my gangsta friends/ All my skater friends/…Jesus freaks and thugs/ We all want the same thing”), Michael’s delicate phrasings (think El DeBarge with an Afro pick and handful of incense) and the track’s lean, paced arrangement is a soothing antithesis to the intimidating force message-oriented artists usually employ. His choice not to delve into too many details (he casually mentions his disappointment in politicians) keeps everything light and preferable to the production, but you don’t get the sense that he’s incapable of fleshing out his opinion, just careful not to let his words get in the way of the music.
Lupe Fiasco, this generation’s Tribe Called Quest/ De La Soul all rolled into one, compliments Michael well, helping embed a certain contemporary hip hip sensibility to prove that Kevin doesn’t only exist in some retro plane.
It’s one of those irresistible debut records that instantly categorizes an artist, perfectly encapsulating their entire artistic scope, as it currently stands, into an informing four minute introduction. With real R&B beginning to make a comeback in 2007, the mysterious Kevin Michael stands as the ideal man to help lead off the new soul era.
We constantly harp on most rappers for being so limited and immature in their subject matter but when a more conscious rapper does come along, we either ignore them completely or are irritated by their preachings or inability to construct accessible songs. On the Kanye West-helmed Be, Common really came into his own and became the rapper who got radio play and avoided typical hip hop scenarios. The album was the breakthrough he needed and rightfully deserved, ranking as one of the most appreciated LPs of the year and becoming his first album to strike platinum. The time has come to follow it up, can Common bring the goods again?
With the smart decision to keep Kanye behind the boards, Common leads off Finding Forever with the blissful “The People”. Impressively blending bit samples of 2Pac, Mountain and Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson, “The People” stands as one of West’s more striking non-commercial productions. It seamlessly flip flops between a East Coast underground/ reggae lilt and a warm nu-jazz portion (perfectly aligned with Dwele’s calming chorus) as Common inspires enlightenment to the general public, knocks the Grammy’s for “trying to India Arie him” and praises West as the new DJ Premier.
Though it’s another stellar display of the man’s enviable rhyming skills, there’s a little wanting for something slightly less attacking from Common here. He doesn’t give West’s remarkable work the breathing room it should have and Dwele should have more to do here than the abbreviated contribution he provides. Better yet, a Kanye verse would have been great for a second verse. Flaws aside, “The People” definitely sustains the beloved gusto of Be. It doesn’t carry much of a radio-friendly presence, but it’s definitely worthy of some Grammy attention.
As nice as it is to get free music, think of how much better your soul would feel if you purchased it the old-fashioned way.
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Not only one of the greatest hip hop albums in recent years, but one of the better soul discs as well (one could easily perch it alongside the socially conscious-leaning R&B classics of Wonder, Gaye and Mayfield), The Roots‘ ninth studio effort How I Got Over hits mind-melting brilliance in it’s every realism-dipped lyric, warm soul-baked groove and nod-worthy chorus, demanding anyone who, even for a split-second, flirted with the notion that being a late-night TV house band and schmoozing with Hollywood’s finest on a daily basis would somehow dilute the band’s work to slap themselves across the face as hard as possible for not knowing how The Roots roll.
A buttery seduction of neo-soul smoove and cool poetic charm subtly fringed with old-school hip hop hype, Q Tip’s 
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