The next studio album from The Roots is set for release next Tuesday. Today we look back to 2008 and this piece written at the time of their Rising Down album.

Someone forgot to crank up the air conditioning in Studio A at Legacy Recording on West 48th Street. Ordinarily that wouldn’t be a bad thing, considering it’s still late March outside and there’s a cool crosstown breeze blowing through midtown Manhattan. But there are more than a hundred people packed into the studio’s main space for a listening party, with hundreds more in the hallway and out on the street waiting to get in, and the air is turning – well, thick. Bottled water is disappearing by the gallon from the makeshift bar that’s set up in the small vocal booth, and with each new arrival on the scene, everyone else seems to wither a little more under the stifling humidity.

The tableau looks quite different in the control room, however, where a smaller entourage is milling about in much cooler confines, temperature and vibe-wise. On a couch in front of the gigantic mixing console, drummer and producer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson is calmly holding court with a few friends, while in another corner of the room, his longtime comrade-in-arms Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter is nodding his head in conversation, his gaze characteristically steady and intent. I get to thinking that I probably should have stuck with executive producer Rich Nichols, who got me in here in the first place, but then it dawns on me: Sure, it’s hot as hell out here, but maybe that’s the best way to dig a listening session for the latest joint by The Roots.

“This is probably the most, for lack of a better term, meat-and-potatoes hip-hop album we’ve done,” Thompson says a few weeks later, ruminating over the sonic contours and subject matter of Rising Down, the Philadelphia-based outfit’s tenth outing. Thompson was integrally involved in the production (along with Nichols) of the album’s 14 tracks – all of which embody a vintage nod to hip-hop’s heyday, when noisy soundscapes, sparse instrumentation and fat-bottomed beats ruled the roost.
“I think it’s important this time out to have a back-to-basics sound,” he clarifies, "just to offset the political nature of the record. It’s a little different from the frills of 11-minute free jazz solos [ “Water” ] and those types of experiments that we did on Phrenology ²⁰⁰². Here, the music is the sugar that helps the lyrical content go down. I’m not saying that we we’re trying to make a 20-year comparison, or an updated version, of Public Enemy’s [It Takes a] Nation of Millions [to Hold Us Back] , but that is definitely an album where the music grabbed you first, and then it was like, ‘Wait – what the hell did he just say?’"

The Roots have made a 17-year career out of mixing music and message, and they’ve done it while carving out a niche all to themselves. In the tradition of such Philly icons as Gamble & Huff (founders of the legendary soul imprint Philadelphia International), The Delfonics, Stanley Clarke and Schoolly D, the band has always functioned with a keenly honed sense of songcraft and musicianship, absorbing influences from across the spectrum – jazz, funk, rock, dub, avant-garde and beyond – to create an edgy and alternative hip-hop amalgam that stands as a constant challenge to what a hip-hop group is “supposed” to sound like.

Rising Down raises the stakes once again. As the successor to 2006’s dark, introspective and sonically psychedelic Game Theory, the new album weaves an in-your-face narrative tapestry led by Black Thought, who tackles such issues as prison double standards ( “Criminal” ), addiction ( “I Can’t Help It” ) and staying true to your creative vision at all costs ( “I Will Not Apologize,” dedicated to Fela Kuti and based on a classic Afrobeat sample).

Musically, the set is stark, raw and stripped-down, with ?uestlove’s uncannily steady grooves providing the heartbeat throughout, while gnarly, saw-toothed synthesizers and the juicy basslines of Owen Biddle (replacing longtime bassist Leonard “Hub” Hubbard) bring up the low end. Kamal Gray (keyboards), “Captain” Kirk Douglas (guitars) and Frank “Knuckles” Walker (percussion) are the veterans who round out the band’s core, with new member Damon Bryson (a.k.a. Tuba Gooding Jr.) stepping in on sousaphone, of all things, on Black Thought’s blistering rap “75 Bars,” which has been lighting up cyberspace since the song’s video was leaked back in February.

“I feel like on Game Theory, we brushed on it,” Trotter says, referring to the more urgent and cohesive political thread that The Roots have explored on their last several albums, going back to 2004’s The Tipping Point (though it’s always been present to various degrees). “But with this album, we figured out how to address all these issues and still make it cohesive. I feel like this album sounds like 2008, you know what I’m saying? And not the United States in 2008, but it sounds like the music of a world citizen at this particular point in time. The climate of the world is a lot less bright and musical now than it has been in the past. This record is reflective of that, in that we’re taking you on a journey from a darker stage to one that’s more hopeful at the end.”

INSTINCTIVE TRAVELS

Movement in all its forms, whether physical, mental or spiritual, has been an overarching theme to many a Roots project. To that end, each member of the band is constantly making connections – to art, music, films, philosophical tracts, psychological treatises and sociological studies – that will often be folded into the overall aesthetic of an album. 1999’s Things Fall Apart, for example, took its title from a 1958 novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, and features a cover photo (one of five different covers when the disc was originally released) of two black teenagers being chased by riot police in New York’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood, circa 1964.

The Roots are a restless, inquisitive bunch. It’s in their nature not only to question so-called reality, but to provoke discussion and insight, and Rising Down is no different. William T. Vollman’s seven-volume study of the history of violence inspired the new album’s title, while the cover image – a post-Reconstruction poster first printed in 1898 – offers a chilling glimpse of racist propaganda that Thompson insists is still clinging to life in the U.S. today.

“It should really be called Fear of a Black Planet, " he says. “Those posters were used down south to put fear in the hearts of former plantation owners and such – fear of what would happen if slaves were indeed free. And it really ties into what’s going on today as far as ‘not enough experience’ being the new fear-oriented sound bite to describe what’s supposedly wrong with [Barack] Obama running the White House.”

For all the mental stimulation and political discourse that drives a Roots album, the information is ultimately inseparable from the music, and this is where the group truly excels. As a live unit, no other hip-hop band can touch them (and in fact, it could be argued that as far as a fully tricked-out touring juggernaut goes, no other hip-hop band even exists). They’ve also routinely demonstrated that they can give any established rock band a serious run for their its – if not an outright run for the exits. For Thompson, who has been playing drums since he was a child, the key elements of the band’s live delivery are dedication, practice and an openness to trying new things.

“We’ve always heard, ‘Oh, you guys are the Grateful Dead of hip-hop,’” Thompson says. “I think a lot of that’s by default because we’re the only band of this caliber doing that type of show. But in the past year, like with every album, I’ve made it a point to say, ‘Okay, this has to be the album where we jump in the pool,’ and by that I mean this is where we start to take some real chances. And it’s scary. It’s one thing to have an agenda that you get comfortable with, but the fear of the unknown – like, what happens if we were to change a song like this, for example – that’s something different.”

The Roots are testing these improvisational waters on their opening slot for Erykah Badu’s current Vortex tour, where the nearly three-hour set they usually play on their own has been hammered down to a razor-sharp point. With just 45 minutes to pull out all the stops and get their music across, Thompson and Trotter both agree that the adjustment tends to bring out the best in the band.

“When we’re faced with time restraints,” Trotter says, “that’s when we just wreck shit from beginning to end. The clock ticks down to zero, and the stage is ablaze. We feel like when we’ve only got 40 or 50 minutes, some of those shows are the most memorable. You just come out with fortune in your eyes, like a bull seeing red, you know?”

LIVE AND DIRECT

Outside New York’s Radio City Music Hall, a steady spring rain is falling, but that hasn’t kept more than 6,000 fans from selling out this particular Friday night show in early May – the fourth date of a nationwide tour that The Roots have shared with Badu. And true to their word, Thompson and Trotter bring the band out swinging with an explosive version of “You Got Me” – the hit from Things Fall Apart that featured Badu on the original. The choice leaves everyone guessing as to whether she’ll come out and sing on it tonight (and even though she doesn’t, the crowd fills in for her). By the time Thompson fires up the beat for Phrenology’s “The Seed (2.0),” which segues into a hyper-funky rendition of Curtis Mayfield’s classic “Move on Up,” everyone in the band has taken a solo, with Captain Kirk providing some memorable highlights on wah wah guitar. When they’re through, the stage is indeed on fire. It’s also worth noting that, two years ago during the band’s two-night stand at the famed venue, Thompson told Time Out New York that, “Our dream has always been to be the black Phish, and this seems like it’s two seconds away from being that.”

Asked about what adjustments, if any, he’s had to make now that he’s playing with a new bassist, Thompson doesn’t flinch. “I think the only difference is that while Hub is definitely more about laying down a groove or a pocket, Owen is more melodic and adventuresome. He wants to go to uncharted territories. I’ve been used to playing in the pocket and not really letting things get out of hand as far as overplaying is concerned, but a lot of that changed when I saw the Chili Peppers show in Philadelphia last year.”

Referring to the onstage rapport that Flea and company have built over the years, Thompson sees a model worth emulating. “They just looked like they were having fun onstage,” he recalls. “They were cracking jokes with each other, and I was like, ‘Damn, why can’t we do that?’ So we’ve been leaning toward actually having fun with each other onstage, which you normally don’t see anybody in hip-hop doing because they’re so serious.” He also cites The Mars Volta – whose lead guitarist and conceptualist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez appears, along with Thompson, on Badu’s latest album, New Amerykah Part One. “The Mars Volta have managed the same challenge we have with a three-hour show. Seeing that really told me we need to shit or get off the pot. We need to really step it up live now.”

To hear Thompson speak so humbly of The Roots’ abilities as a live unit, it’s almost as though he’s implying that the band’s diehard fanbase has been missing something. Many heads would argue that The Roots have always taken their gigs to a higher level of musicianship, but it’s also true that in the last few years, some high-profile jams have made others outside the circle take notice.

Word had started getting around that The Roots were more than just a great, live hip hop band with various collaborations its members had participated in, perhaps most notably when Thompson took the drum kit behind Phil Lesh, John Mayer and blues guitar legend Buddy Guy for the 2005 Jammys. Then the following year, The Roots were invited to take part in a tribute to Bob Dylan at Lincoln Center, and their rendition of “Masters of War” left the entire house in jaw-dropped awe.

“I already had a chip on my shoulder,” Thompson recalls, “because it was like we were expected to do the rap version of the most obvious Dylan song – ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ or something like that.” Roots recording engineer Steve Mandel had given Thompson three CDs full of Dylan songs, and “Masters of War” was the one that stood out. “It’s definitely one of the edgiest middle fingers to the government I’ve heard. But a lot of the appeal of it for me was out of some sort of imaginary revenge fantasy that I had in my head over any blogger that was just, like, scoffing at the idea of us playing a Dylan tribute. I knew I wanted to annihilate that night, so once it went over like gangbusters at Lincoln Center, we were just like, ‘We might as well keep this in the show.’” Ever since, the song has become a Roots live staple.

Last year, Thompson raised eyebrows again when he was invited to play Bonnaroo’s SuperJam with Ben Harper and John Paul Jones. “The funny thing was I told Ben and John, ‘I’ll do this, but I don’t want this to be the Led Zeppelin tribute night.’ And halfway through rehearsal, I’m like, ‘What the fuck – I know this is gonna be a Led Zeppelin tribute night, and I better come with it.’”

The trio started with “When the Levee Breaks,” a song that still amazes Thompson for the sheer strength that Zep drummer John Bonham brought to the original. “Right before I went onstage, I’m sure people were thinking, ‘Well, what do you know about John Bonham? The stuff that Rick Rubin sampled for The Beastie Boys?’” He stops and laughs again at the memory. “And I’m just like, wait ‘til you get a load of me! We face that often, so the happy reaction is just to shock people into realizing that we know what we’re doing. But that night was fun. Even though I didn’t want it to be a tribute night, it wound up being that, and I was totally fine with it. And I felt more justified. Bonham himself would have told you that he was basically trying to approximate Motown drummers, just with a heavier hand, and that’s right up my alley.”

AND AWAY WE GO-GO

“Rising Up” is the concluding track on Rising Down, and in true Roots fashion, it’s a song that brims with blissful positivity amidst the heavier topical material that drives the album. It also marks the first time the band has taken a stab at go-go music, which makes sense considering how often The Roots have played in neighboring Washington D.C. – a straight shot down the road from Philly.
“We finally came up with a revelation a few years back,” Thompson says. “There’s a black jamband audience that the United States doesn’t know about, and that’s go-go music. Cats will play for 20 minutes before the vocals even start. I really think that if the Chuck Browns of the world – and all the top D.C. go-go bands like Rare Essence, The Junkyard Band, Trouble Funk, The Huck-A-Bucks – I think if they just had at least one night at Bonnaroo, that could change their lives. These guys do mammoth, four-hour shows, but they rarely get exposure outside of D.C.”

The Roots are hoping their own increased visibility in recent years will have an effect. Thompson in particular has built a solid reputation as a sought-after session musician and producer, having worked with everyone from D’Angelo to Jay-Z to Common to, most recently, the legendary Al Green, whose latest album Lay It Down recaptures the soulful glory of the right reverend’s tenure with Hi Records back in the ‘70s. Meanwhile, Black Thought has appeared on albums by DJ Krush, J Dilla, Soulive, Damian Marley, The Coup and Linkin Park (to name just a few), and continues to perfect his incomparable flow, which often draws comparison to Big Daddy Kane, Kool G Rap and other heavyweight hip-hop MCs.

“I feel like I’ve found my sound,” Trotter says, “and I’ve become more effective at using my voice. I mean, there was a time I didn’t even know if I was gonna be a vocalist. But once I decided where I was headed, I felt like I should take it seriously. Even in college – my major was radio, TV and film – I had a lot of voice classes and public speaking classes, just learning how to use the diaphragm and different breathing techniques. So I feel like, in my old age [laughs], I’ve become more effective at using what I learned.”

In fact, The Roots have learned a lot about themselves since they first busted out of Philly in 1993. Harking back to those leaner years, Rising Down’s opener, “The Pow Wow,” documents a 1994 phone confrontation with an irate record label exec. As executive producer Rich Nichols tells it, this was a time when the band’s future was entirely uncertain.

“Stakes were a lot higher then,” he says. “It’s a long way from where The Roots are now, where these guys are established and they can make a living doing what they do. The questions back then were a lot more existential – like, how are you gonna survive, and what are you gonna do with the rest of your life, not knowing if any of this was gonna work, you know what I mean?”

Thompson agrees, and looks to one of the monster jambands of all time as a yardstick for what’s ahead. For him, The Roots are beginning to reach a new level of recognition. “I’ve always liked the fact that Phish has a fanbase so loyal to them that they were able to play five nights at Madison Square Garden,” he says. “That’s excellent. And for us to sell out two nights at Radio City [in 2006], that was probably my favorite moment of my career. I usually don’t like that whole pat-myself-on-the-back thing, but to me that was a major accomplishment. I mean, Ed Bradley from 60 Minutes was in the fifth row, and it kind of hit me at that moment that we were in a really good, fortunate position. Maybe for a night or so I celebrated, and then I went back to underdog status because the next night in Connecticut, the balcony wasn’t sold out [laughs]. But we’ve made some history, and for that reason I think there’s still much more to do.”