Underground hip-hop pioneers embrace the dark side
When The Roots aren’t coiling slow jams around brilliant word play, they’re assuming their identity as an actual band, structuring verse-and-chorus interplay that blurs any conventional demarcation between hip-hop, funk and rock. With Rising Down, the Philadelphia natives can now cite industrial and aggro as new ingredients in this war journal of incendiary beats and rhymes. MC Black Thought describes the album as a modern embrace of East Coast rap, but instead of falling into the genre’s infatuation with money and hedonism, the record finds an unlikely muse in nihilism. Tracks like “Singing Man” narrate lyrical portraits of school shootings and international atrocity, with only a “suicide note to explain this.” These damaged siren songs are a harsh counterpoint to the organic flow of The Tipping Point, but nonetheless deliver an honest and abrasive diatribe within The Roots’ legacy of civil commentary and inspired musicianship.