Tag: hip hop

Review: For The Roots It’s All In The Music

by thedailyrecord, posted in Concert review, Kansas City Star

Above: “You Got Me” in Japan earlier this year.

By Joel Francis

The Kansas City Star

Underground artist Girl Talk has generated some buzz with his second album, which layers Public Enemy over Heart, mashes M.I.A. with the Cranberries and mixes “C’mon N Ride It (The Train)” into “99 Tears.”

What Girl Talk does on his laptop, the Roots did live on stage for two hours on Thursday in the sold-out Harrah’s Voodoo Lounge. Whether it was bass player Owen Biddle quoting the melody for Duke Ellington’s “Caravan,” MC Black Thought leading the way through Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up” or between-song riffs on “Iko Iko” or “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” the septet touched on nearly every facet of recorded music.

The Roots’ biggest hit, “You Got Me,” was also the most transformed. The song somehow morphed from neo soul ballad into “My Favorite Things,” a bass solo/metal jam and Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” before wrapping up.

The evening started quietly, with guitarist Kirk Douglas alone onstage, noodling away. With a tip of the hat to the Talking Heads, the other band members slowly joined him and picked up their instruments. By the time everyone was assembled MC Black Thought ripped into “I Can’t Help It.” They wouldn’t let up for the next hour.

Prowling the stage like panthers, the super-tight ensemble dropped volume and tempo on a dime, majestically flowing each song into the next regardless of style or arrangement — the ultimate mixtape.

There were no down moments or low points. Each song fed off the previous number’s energy and all were spectacular. Of particular note was a reading of “Quills” taken at Ramones speed that showcased Black Thought’s amazing breath control and stamina.

When most bands want more low end they turn the bass up. The Roots hired a tuba player. Damon Bryson, a.k.a. Tuba Gooding Jr., leapt joyously about the stage despite his heavy instrument, blasting away “All in the Music” and buoying the typically horn-heavy “Jungle Boogie.” Longtime Roots collaborator James Poyser sat in for missing keyboard player Kamal Gray and added a Dr. Dre synth line to “I Will Not Apologize.”

The centerpiece of the evening was a 15-minute rendition of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War.” Performed by the trio of drummer Questlove, Tuba and Douglas, the song was previously played at the band’s rapturous performance in Kansas City at Harrah’s last year. Questlove said they were going to keep doing it until the war in Iraq was over. The song bobbed and weaved its way through the “Star Spangled Banner,” “Taps,” a military drum cadence, a Black Sabbath send-up and a drum solo. Owing more to Jimi Hendrix’ “Machine Gun” than Woody Guthrie, the song ended with Douglas and Tuba working their way through the crowd, soloing furiously. It was an eerie prelude to Independence Day.

For people who need classifications, the Roots are typically filed under hip hop. For everyone else, they are everything that’s right with music today.

Setlist: I Can’t Help It, Rising Up, Please Don’t Go, In the Music, Star, Quills, Step Into the Realm, Proceed, Long Time, Mellow My Man, Act Too (The Love of My Life), Criminal, Masters of War, I Will Not Apologize, You Got Me, Get Busy, Jungle Boogie/Don’t Feel Right, The Next Movement (encore:) The Seed 2.0, Men at Work

Below: The first third of “Masters of War” from Montreal last May.

Rage Rocks the Bells

by thedailyrecord, posted in Concert review

Rock the Bells Zack

Public Enemy, Black Star, The Roots and Wu-Tang fight the Battle of the Bay in San Francisco

By Joel Francis

The Giants may have been out of town, but that didn’t stop the hits from pouring across McCovey Cove near ATT Stadium when the Rock the Bells festival landed in San Francisco last week.


It was a dream bill that 45,000 fans of ‘90s hip hop couldn’t resist, but with two stages of incredible lineups performing simultaneously some sacrifices had to be made. In the end, The Roots won over The Coup and Public Enemy trumped Blackalicious. Below are some of the day’s highlights.


Public Enemy

Public Enemy was raging against the machine before there was a Rage Against the Machine. Backed by a full band, Chuck D, Flavor Flav and Terminator X showed that songs written during Reagan and Bush Sr. still had plenty of both relevance and resonance. The band did their best Rage tribute with a version of “Son of a Bush” that’s unlikely to win any fans at Fox News. That said, Chuck D probably knows he’s unlikely to win any new fans in the era of T.I., Chamillionaire and, shudder, Flavor of Love, so the band mostly stuck to songs off its groundbreaking initial albums like “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” “Fight the Power,” “Rebel Without a Pause,” and “Public Enemy No. 1.” Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian popped out to lend his axe to “Bring the Noise” and Flavor Flav closed down the set with a performance of “911 Is A Joke” that had the crowd rapping along.


The Roots

As anyone who saw the Roots perform at the Voodoo Lounge last spring can attest, this Philadelphia-based band is one of the most engaging and entertaining performers in the business – regardless of genre. Giving the only 45 minutes was criminal, though predictably the band made the most of what they had. MC Black Thought and drummer/bandleader ?uestlove opened the set with drums-and-mic duet “Web” before the rest of the band and a three-piece horn section joined them. Every song was a highlight, but to watch the group transition from the hip hop beats of “The Next Movement”  to the funky rock of “The Seed 2.0” to the neo-soul flavors of “Act Too (The Love of My Life)” and finally a Philly soul cover of “I Can Understand It” was mind-bogglingly delicious.


Talib Kweli and Mos Def

Mos Def and Talib Kweli have only made one album together which was released nearly a decade ago, but they are still linked in most fans’ minds. There’s good reason for this, as each bring out the best in the other. Mos Def is one of the most improvisational MCs in the business, which is both a blessing and a curse. On his best nights, he rivals most jazz performers with his reworkings of song. On an off night, he comes across as bored. Kweli is one of the best MCs in the game (you don’t get props from Jay-Z on record for nothing) who keeps getting better, but can at times slip into auctioneer mode. Kweli keeps Mos from wandering off, while Mos pushes Kweli’s cadences.

Kweli opened the set on his own, teasing songs from his new album, “Ear Drum,” and launching into classics like “The Blast” and “Move Something,” before bringing out Strong Arm Steady and Jean Grae. Though the guests – especially Grae – were a nice surprise, Kweli was at his best when the DJ dropped out and let Kweli rhyme a cappella. Mos Def took the stage halfway through “Get By” and the results were as close to jazz as two men with a mic are likely to get. From there the duo segued into the classic “Definition,” “Supreme Supreme,” a newer collaboration, and “Respiration.”


Mos performed most of his set on the ground in the area between the stage and the crowd barricade after noticing the strong wind off the bay had the lighting rigs swaying like chandeliers. “It’s hard enough to be a black man in America,” he quipped. “I got kids, y’all.” Fortunately, video cameras and three giant screens kept Mos from being invisible at ground level as he worked his way through a set heavy on newer material. Mos closed with a great medley of “Ms. Fat Booty” and “Brown Skin Lady,” which brought Kweli back out and, finally, “Umi Says.”


Wu-Tang Clan

Hip hop as a live medium tends to get a bad rap (sorry) and acts like Wu-Tang Clan are Exhibit A on how something that sounds great on record doesn’t always transfer well to the stage. Part of the problem is the makeup of the group. There are nine MCs in the Clan, which can be a nightmare at the mixing board. Throughout the evening, each mic was mixed at a different level, rendering lots of vocals inaudible and resulting in something that sounded like loud choreographed chanting. Most songs could only be recognized by the sample or the chorus. Oddly enough the evening’s finest number, “Triumph,” had little in the way of either. Method Man carried the rest of the Clan on his back and carried the night (when he wasn’t crowd surfing and being carried by the crowd), which leaned heavily towards the group’s debut “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).”


Rage Against the Machine

After seven years and nearly two presidential terms apart, Rage reclaimed the stage with a force and energy so powerful a S.W.A.T. team should have assembled. In between Wu-Tang and Rage’s sets, the crowd quickly morphed from a diverse, backpacker good-times gathering to a muscular, white frat-boy mosh pit. There was a mixture of menace and testosterone in the air as a crowd who had patiently waited through three Audioslave albums hungered for the return of the real thing.

They weren’t disappointed. Singer Zack De La Rocha led the band through over a dozen volatile indictments that included hits like “Bombtrack,” “Bulls on Parade” and “Guerilla Radio” with album cuts like “Bullet in the Head,” “Vietnow” and the Afrika Bambaataa cover “Renegades of Funk.” This was the musical equivalent of “Fight Club.”


As the festival closed, the defiant refrain of “Killing in the Name” hung in the air. Seven years was too long to wait, but the combustion of Rage’s 80-minute set made it understandable why these ingredients couldn’t be mixed too often.

Hip Flop

by thedailyrecord, posted in review

By Joel Francis

Two of this year’s most anticipated hip hop releases were also its biggest disappointments.

In August, OutKast released “Idlewild,” the soundtrack to their first film and the follow-up to 2004’s Grammy-winning smash release “Speakerboxx/The Love Below.” Like all OutKast projects “Idlewild” is bursting with a million ideas. Unfortunately, few of them are seen all the way through. Tracks like “The Train” and “Morris Brown” fire on all cylinders and are a delight to the ears, but they are also the exception. At 78 minutes in length, the album is littered with songs like “Chronomentrophobia” that hint at something bigger but end before jelling. The worst offender of all is the aptly titled “Bad Note,” a 9-minute dirge that goes absolutely nowhere. Some judicious editing and persistence could have saved this project. Instead we’re left with an album that’s ripe for cherry picking.

If “Idlewild” fails because it has too many ideas, then the exact opposite problem plagues Jay-Z’s “Kingdom Come.”

Jay-Z announced his retirement from rap three years ago and has spent that time releasing two albums with R. Kelly and guesting on numerous albums. Instead of returning from his so-called sabbatical refreshed, Hova offers us absolutely nothing new. The Jigga-man used to justify his thug, but now he’s justifying his age (37) and rehashing the same tired rhymes about his wealth, his game and his momma.

Unfortunately, Jay-Z’s not the only one phoning it in. His lyrical lethargy is unfortunately compounded by production is even less inspired. Two cuts recycle the samples that gave us MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” and Wreckx-N-Effect’s “Rump Shaker” over 15 years ago. Unfortunately, these tracks shine in comparison with the limp and lazy beats provided by the usually-reliable Just Blaze and Dr. Dre. Put it this way: when the best and most original beat on the album is provided by Coldplay’s Chris Martin, you know you’re in trouble.

I don’t want to hear Jigga sleepily tell me how “30’s the new 20” any more than I want to hear OutKast’s Andre 3000 ape Cab Calloway’s schtick. While it’s regrettable that two of the most reliable and original acts in hip hop have misfired so greatly, it’s comforting to know we only have to wait until next summer for redemption.