(Def Jam/Universal)

Eighth studio album from Philly jazz-hoppers is combo’s most political yet

Philadelphia’s The Roots have long been considered among the more influential and creative group of hip hop messengers out there, thanks in no small part to organic, jazz/rock and avant-garde elements which are liberally added to their frequently live beats (courtesy of ?uestlove) and hipster wordplay from rapper Black Thought. The hybrid reached its peaks with 1996’s Illadelph Halflife and 2002’s Phrenology, but the group have selected a different approach for new studio album Rising Down. The rock jamming and psychedelic soul factors of The Roots’ sound largely take a back seat to darker, more synthesised arrangements. This is deliberate, as Rising Down is both a look back and a hard-eyed observation of the frequently unchanging state of affairs in contemporary America – the album begins and ends with a tape recording of a ‘90s Roots in argument with their management about their then-record label, and the typical hip hop trick of employing plentiful guests on one’s record is here employed cannily, so that the likes of Mos Def (in the punchy title track), Saigon (in the disquieting but sing-song catchy Criminal)  and Porn (in the dark, tense I Can’t Help It) maintain the album’s theme of past and present experiences conspiring to create an uncertain future. For this reason, the most commercial track the group came up with (Birthday Girl, a pleasant guitar-led pop rap tune featuring Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump) was not placed in the album’s running order, as its sunniness was perceived as compromising to the record’s harder-edged outlook. Its appearance towards the end of the Australian edition does indeed illustrate a song out of keeping with the rest of the album, with the more cautious (and, hence, more liberating) optimism of Rising Up a more true finale to the record.

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MATT THROWER

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