September 5–12, 1996
cover story
With a new album and bigger beats, can The Roots combine hip-hop ingenuity with mainstream success?
It's Saturday, August 3 and clouds are setting in on Central Park's Summerstage. With less than two hours till showtime, today's headline performers The Roots are nowhere to be found. The warmup band, Bass is Base, has finished their soundcheck and the Summerstage stage manager paces by the converted trailer that should be The Roots' dressing room.
A little over an hour ago, The Roots' manager called from New Jersey and said the tour van had broken down and needed servicing. At 1: 45 p.m., there's still no sign of the Philadelphia hip-hop band that was scheduled to be here at 11 a.m. to prepare for a 3 p.m. show. College students, old hippies, homeboys and dreadheads are drifting into the makeshift amphitheater where Funkadelic, John Zorn, Yoko Ono and Pharaoh Sanders have all appeared in the past few weeks.
When the band members stroll into the Summerstage arena, shortly after 2 p.m., there is little fanfare awaiting them — just a fruit plate, bagels and a quiche that's quickly getting stale. In many ways, this is just another day on the job and they've punched in late. There won't be any soundcheck, but the show will go on. The calm of road veterans seems to alleviate the backstage tension. Even the stage manager's nerves are quelled.
"After you've been touring so long, you quickly realize that getting to the gig is about 80 to 90 percent of the whole thing," says bassist Hub (Leonard Hubbard).
The chance to play a free show in New York City is a great opportunity for this Philly band to establish the mass-market fan base they crave. Their major-label debut, Do You Want More?!!!??, sold a respectable 300,000 albums, but band members don't think it's much when held up against the numerous critical raves.
"People come up to me and say, 'Wow, you sold 300,000 copies of your record, that's incredible,' but to us it was a slap in the face," says The Roots' drummer Ahmir, (who alternately goes by B.R.O. THER? and ?uest Love).
In February 1995, USA Today touted The Roots as a "Best Bet for Stardom." A little over a year later, they're struggling with intergroup tension, members quitting, critical backlash and pangs of cynicism about show business "success." The upside of this negative energy is that it has forced The Roots to mature as musicians and entertainers and inspired them to work even harder on their new album, Illadelph Halflife (Geffen), which will be released on Sept. 24. The word halflife usually refers to a nuclear material such as uranium — a substance with longstanding power.But The Roots' conflicting desire for artistic inventiveness and mainstream commercial success might be the cause for meltdown.
Do You Want More?!!!?? was a groundbreaking album that captured the live jazz-rap sound The Roots developed playing on the streets of Philly, most notably South Street. Ahmir's influences, from Max Roach to the Average White Band, kept the bottom-end crisp. Upright bassist Hub bopped through melodic lines that hinted at his Carnegie-Mellon classical training. The Roots broke hip-hop tradition by not using a DJ or sampler. Rappers Tariq Trotter (a.k.a Black Thought) and Malik B. (Malik Abdul-Basit) iced the mix with scat-influenced, trippy rhymes about block parties and the thrill of getting a major label contract.
But that thrill soon wore off when The Roots realized their music was marginalized by the mainstream hip-hop audience that expected simple, repetitive grooves and enough bottom end to rattle a jeep.
"A lot of hip-hop enthusiasts are close-minded when it comes to live music," notes King Britt, who DJs along with Ahmir at Silk City Lounge. "Often, the more it sounds sampled, the better." Even The Fugees, often cited for playing their own instruments live, include a DJ in their band and lots of samples on their albums.
The Roots want to be accepted as a hip-hop band rather than a novelty jazz act. Illadelph Halflife intends to prove that this arty combo can kick out rhymes and beats that will catch the ear of the street and get the woofers thumping as well as retain the cafe crowd that fell in love with Do You Want More?!!!??
The driving, trip-hop of Illadelph Halflife is such a far cry from the live interplay of Do You Want More?!!!??, critics will be forced either to praise The Roots for their inventiveness or admonish the album as an attempt at more mainstream rap. One local rap manager, speaking off the record, figures the group will lose its core, jazz-head audience with the shift in style. Either way, Illadelph Halflife contains The Roots' most accessible and mature material to date, as well as its most adventurous.
Instrumentally, Hub has switched from upright bass to electric and his lines are tighter and heavier. Tariq's and Malik's vocal delivery lunges and stabs with a sharper edge. New keyboardist Kamal favors minor chords where the departed Scott flitted through major scales. But the biggest difference is that the band fully embraces sampling. Songs are the constructs of bits played live, then sampled and looped.
Since the release of Do You Want More?!!!?? in the fall of 1994, The Roots have been on the road 250 to 300 days a year, making them one of the most frequent touring bands with the William Morris Agency or Geffen Records. They perform so much they don't need to rehearse, says Tariq, and the show is never the same twice.
But their live show, which has always been a strongpoint, is starting come under fire. As part of a June/July Vibe cover story on the Fugees, writer Sacha Jenkins cited sloppiness in The Roots — an opening act on the tour.
"The Roots' real rhythm seems to have been locked away in a basement somewhere in Philly for the night," wrote Jenkins, quickly pitting two of America's preeminent live hip-hop bands against one another and then siding with the subjects of his cover story.
The writer also accused The Roots of creative larceny. Both groups do a medley of old-school rap tunes in their set, paying props to their influences. It's usually a big crowd-pleaser, but tension erupted between the two camps over which group is the originator of "Hip-Hip History 101."
"The Fugees stole their damn show," contends Kelo (Kenyatta Williams), who co-produces The Roots in the studio and was working as a soundman on that leg of the tour.
Tariq is more diplomatic, but still peeved. "I remember Ruffhouse calling and calling us to get the Fugees to play our signing celebration show at the Troc. They played that night and we were doing the old-school medley back then, they weren't."
Even though The Roots say the Fugees' multiplatinum success doesn't bother them, the insulting Vibe article does.
"That might as well have been our Vibe cover story," confesses Ahmir with a shrug, implying that the negative press was going to have much more impact than it should.
When The Roots take the Central Park stage, show business politics are set aside. No hassle with the tour van, pesky article or lack of soundcheck can prevent this well-oiled, creative machine from putting on a stellar performance.
Ahmir's snare and bass drums punch sonic rivets in the air and Hub locks the bass notes under the beat, forging a precise rhythm that makes the two instruments almost indecipherable from one another. Playing live hip-hop drums and bass means you have to emulate the repetitive samples and drum machines that are staples of the genre.
"It's a lot harder than straight-ahead bass playing," said Hub, a few minutes before going on stage. "Hip-hop fans are used to the steady beat, it's always in the pocket and hit the same way because it's sampled. Try doing that for five to seven minutes and your hands start to cramp. It's not as easy as it looks."
But if Hub is taking pains to stay on the beat, he makes it look like the bass is playing itself while he dances. His fingers flutter and snap, anticipating each of Ahmir's cymbal accents and returning to the strings only when necessary. He laughs and motions approval at each of his bandmates' flashes of improvisational brilliance. No tough gangsta or pained rocker posing here. Hub's jovial nature is infectious. The audience on the lawn quickly turns into an upper-body aerobics class, with the crowd pulsing their necks to the beat.
The past two years of touring have greatly improved Tariq's showmanship skills. He pokes the air with his fingertips to punctuate rhymes. He tosses his dreads to emphasize a groove. He has loosened up and learned to express his words with body language.
"We're setting in from southside, pushing us up north, from illadelphia raps to fly points across the map, bring it back to respond react," pronounces Tariq in the song "Respond/React."
Tariq and Ahmir, who first formed a creative partnership at the High School for the Performing Arts, are both from the south side of Philly — making the rest of the city "up north." After traveling the "fly points" of the world, as the song says, The Roots are taking the chance to reflect on themselves and Philadelphia.
Several new tunes, including "Push Up Your Lighter" and "Section," find their way into the set. Older notables such as "Proceed" also pop up.
But Rahzel the Godfather of Noyze turns out to be today's showstopper. Since the last album, this human beatbox has been promoted to full-time Roots membership. He can mimic hip-hop sounds and arrangements so accurately that if there were an army of people with the same talent, they'd make drum machines and sequencers obsolete. He's The Roots' live DJ and sampler rolled into one. From oversaturated, distorted guitar leads to crackling snares, horn snippets, record scratching and Toni Braxton vocal lines, he puts Rich Little and the Fat Boys to shame. It's no wonder Geffen has given this one-man band a record contract and will release his first solo effort next year.
Beginning with the hip-hop history lesson, Rahzel and Tariq join forces to recreate classic hits by Schoolly D, Doug E. Fresh, Slick Rick, Big Daddy Kane and A Tribe Called Quest. The crowd sings along and gets more and more pumped as the impressions pile up. Tariq has said that if he and Ahmir hadn't started The Roots, the two would probably still be goofing around, aping their favorite tunes. This section of the show not only proves that point, but also illustrates their notion that rap is a cultural chronicle that should be passed down from one generation to the next and built upon with an understanding of its history.
When the medley comes to a close, Tariq fades back and allows Rahzel to take the spotlight. By this time the audience is so entranced that nobody creeps away when a little drizzle starts. The Godfather of Noyze runs through another set of classic tunes, without accompaniment this time.
As Rahzel (the only New Yorker in the band) astounds his hometown crowd, Tariq hangs with a small posse of groupies and friends fraternizing behind the drumset. He hugs rapper Dice Raw, who's shown up to make a guest appearance. This ad hoc family reunion is surprisingly open, given the hundreds of people staring at the stage. One posse member unwraps a dime-store cigar and starts rolling a blunt just inconspicuously enough for the crowd and patrolling cops not to notice. Tariq and friends sneak behind the backdrop, take a few puffs and return.
The whole band plus guest rappers Dice Raw and M.A.R.S. bring the show to a close with the new single "Clones." This verbal assault on MCs who jump on the popular bandwagon to make a buck has been the group's biggest hit to date, peaking at no.1 on the CMJ and Gavin Report hip-hop charts. As Illadelph Halflife's first single, it's a great omen for the album's sales potential. But the band still wonderswhether Geffen will give the record the support it needs to succeed.
"If we were excluded from the hip-hop audience the first time around, it's because we weren't marketed properly," figures Hub, now back in the dressing room trailer after the show. The Roots were Geffen's first foray into hip-hop music a few years ago and several band members say they suffered because of the label's lack of experience with the scene.
Even though Geffen A? reps have promised to improve the marketing effort for Illadelph Halflife, Hub isn't convinced it's a priority. He looks out at a crowd of 500 plus and wonders why no flyers were passed out to tease the new album's release.
"Where are the free singles of "Clones" we could be tossing out into the audience?" he asks. "The record company's office is just down the street and all of those promos are just sitting there in piles when they could be here." Like the rest of The Roots, he feels burned by the years of work the band devoted to supporting the first album and the small amount of appreciation that was exhibited by Geffen in response.
This self-described ghetto child from West Philadelphia says that he's recently come to realize the difference between personal and professional relationships. Band members used to get the two mixed up, leading to troublesome misconceptions.
"You've got to watch out for yourself," he figures, "because a record company will just leave you and your record out there and forget that you exist."
The Roots' A? representative at Geffen, Wendy Goldstein, says in a separate conversation that The Roots' expectations were a little unrealistic for their major label debut. She admits that the label and the band weren't "on the same page" for the marketing of Do You Want More?!!!??, but the two camps are in alignment for the new album.
"Geffen considers that they've established a band if they sell more than 100,000 copies, which The Roots did," she notes. "Personally, I think it's better if the band doesn't have a million-seller the first time out, because if their next album isn't more successful then it will seem like a failure. The Roots have nowhere to go but up."
As the crowd disperses, the backstage posse has grown to more than 20. It's a fairly sedate, picnic-like gathering, with everyone sitting around park tables and benches. Kelo says it's not unusual for Tariq or Kamal to hook up with a groupie after a show.Tariq will spend the night in New York and then return to Philly tomorrow. Ahmir will also stay over and possibly meet up with R?'s newest starD'Angelo, who he's working with as well these days. The group has to be back in New York by Monday for a three-night stand at renowned experimental jazz club, the Knitting Factory.
Why does the band play more often in New York than their hometown? Ahmir says the hometown crew doesn't get as excited to see them because they grew up watching their street act. Tariq figures there's no decent hip-hop venue in Philly, and Hub contends that it's because they don't have a top 10 hit. But that may change with Illadelph Halflife.
The following Saturday, The Roots are huddled in a cavernous basalt rock quarry in West Nyack, NY — three hours away from home. This muddy and worn industrial site has been transformed into a video set for the second single from the new album, "Concerto of the Desperado." If the clouds stay out of the sun, this will be a perfect day to film.
A chorus of 25 or so hired extras surrounds Tariq as he raps into a microphone made to look as if it's growing out of the ground. Director Chuck Stone, a Philly native who relocated to New York six years ago, also shot one of the group's first videos, "Distortion to Static."
"Videos have been the weakest link in the band's creative output," says Tariq. The video for the first single, "Clones," was in his words a "disaster."
"The director wanted us to shoot each other with video cameras and joke around," he recalls, "but that's not where we're coming from for this album. That single in particular is one of the most serious things we've written and I don't even think there was enough footage of us to put together a serious video." What makes it worse, he adds, is that the video has been the most popular they've ever done.
The "Concerto of the Desperado" video will have a more ominous feel, befitting the mood of the song which borrows inspiration from spaghetti Westerns. Amel Laurieux of Groove Theory adds a haunting operatic soprano vocal riff to the track, creating one of the more distinctive hip-hop hooks ever committed to tape.
Stone considered filming the video in a Southwestern canyon to visually capture the epic flavor of the tune, but kept the production on the East Coast to stay within the $80,000 budget.
The humongous rock quarry is an apt substitute. Tariq considers the jagged ridges in the walls a subliminal metaphor for The Roots' cutting edge music.
The narrative of "Concerto of the Desperado" returns to the theme of MCs who don't understand the history of hip-hop. Gold-digging rappers mine through the quarry, searching for mikes. When they come upon turntables, they don't know how to use them. They are the desperados, trying to make a career by copping someone else's image and MC style.
If anything plagues The Roots package, its the lack of a distinctive look in a market that is driven by images. The Timberland work boots and Rugby shirts many of the members wear hardly sets their look apart. Except for Ahmir's hefty, king-sized frame and seven-inch afro, this group of preppily dressed musicians could be strolling across a college campus.
But for the video shoot today the posse is outfitted a little differently — in camouflage. Tariq's Ray Ban-style sunglasses and straw hat with dreads jutting out the bottom make him look like he should be chilling on a Jamaican beach. Yet when the camera zooms in for a closeup, Tariq's cool pose becomes in-your-face rapper.
Tariq is known as the "stone boy" because he tends to show little emotion, says Kelo. The sunglasses accentuate the emotional distance the rapper likes to maintain.
Ahmir, in a hip-length pale yellow windbreaker, looks like Paddington bear with a 'fro. His size and demeanor earned him the nickname "teddy bear" among friends. Like a bear, he can be cold and intimidating at first but once you get to know him, he tends to be paternal and considerate.
Hub wears his trademark hooded sweatshirt in bright lemon. Although it's a simple signature element, the bassist says hip-hop heads connect with it.
"Musically, we're hitting the hip-hop crowd with something new. I want to present them with something visually they can lock into, that says, 'That's just some homeboy with a bass.' Image is an important side of entertainment."
The value of image in the music industry is something Ahmir has become disgusted with over the past few years. "Talent is about 5 percent of what it takes to make it," he considers bitterly. "The rest is image and favors." But making videos forces a band to decide upon an image.
The oft-absent Roots rapper, Malik B., is on the set today, but he's not enthralled by the production. If there is a break in shooting when he's not needed, he tends to wander away from the cameras toward the other side of the quarry.
It's hard to gauge how tight his relationship is with the rest of the band these days. Last year, when the band was in Frankfurt, Germany, he announced he'd had enough of the grind of touring and was going home. Tariq says no one saw it coming. Malik admits that he kept a lot of his feelings inside, and jumping ship left some scars.
"I think the rest of the guys felt some kind of betrayal because I did it in the middle of tour," he recalls, but tempers that by saying everyone in the band respected his decision. At the time he was unsure if he wanted to be a member of The Roots; he quit the band for a week or so before deciding to rejoin.
Ahmir figures time off the road allowed Malik to get his head together and ruminate about what they've all been dealing with, the disparity between their idea of what a major-label contract would bring and the reality. But Malik's lyrics sparked some of the best tracks on the album, says Ahmir, including "No Alibi,""No Great Pretender" and "It Don't Stop."
"No Alibi," which is also one of Tariq's favorite cuts, is more an abstract mood piece than a straightforward narrative, explains Malik, but the words reflect a time of personal problems. "If you seen it or heard it maybe probably I did it/ Maybe maybe not, I admit what I committed/ Exhibit the truth because I'm living proof why I have no disguise and no alibi."
Malik says he currently has a day job unloading trucks to "stay out of trouble." He won't specify what his problems are, other than "trying to be a good person," and is a bit glassy-eyed and hesitant when discussing the matter.
In a different conversation, Tariq says that Malik is going through a tough time, but refrains from specifics. When asked if the band is doing anything to help Malik out, his response hints at years of concern.
"Malik knows right from wrong, he knows what moves are going to result in trouble. We've already had conversations and cried with one another, but I've got to live my own life, I can't be constantly worried that Malik is going to get in trouble and wondering what are we going to do to save poor Malik. He's got to save himself, there's nothing we can do, there's nothing his parents can do to save him... who are we to say, 'Malik, stay away from these motherfuckers, they're going to get you in trouble.' He knows that already."
Malik says he'll continue to record with The Roots as well as do a few shows in the near future, but he's also working on solo material. As things wrap up on the set, the group seems not only content with the day's work, but at peace with one another.
The band has come a long way in the past year. When they returned home from Europe last summer, things didn't seem nearly as optimistic. They'd pushed Do You Want More?!!!?? all they could and the response was a disappointment. Lack of respect from Geffen and the mainstream hip-hop audience got their collective wheels spinning.
"There's a time when you can look at all of these factors and go into the studio and do whatever you want for the next record," waxes Tariq. "Or you can decide that this is going to be your second album out of 30."
This long-term planning came from inside The Roots camp, he adds; their contract with Geffen gave the band creative control. But the future sound of The Roots was still uncertain.
There were discussions and arguments between Ahmir and Kelo over whether live drums could ever be as explosive as sampled ones and which was more true to hip-hop.
Kelo, who created a good portion of the the loops on Illadelph Halflife, says arguing with Ahmir is no simple task.
"He's a Capricorn and I'm a Capricorn and we're two natural-born leaders and stubborn," he remarks. Even after Ahmir accepted the notion of sampling his own drumming, he had a hard time warming up to it. Kelo remembers the hard part was getting Ahmir not to play like a drum machine during the sampling sessions. Once he loosened up, the distinctive loops came.
At the same time, Ahmir was trying to come up with sampled loops of his own and having a hard time of it.
Tariq was uninspired by the tracks Ahmir brought in at first. Ahmir respected Tariq's opinion, but felt left out of the creative process when a couple of tracks were finished without his assistance. "Ahmir grumbled: 'am I this group or aren't I?'" recalls Tariq. The drummer quit the group out of frustration and returned a few days later.
Once recording was at a full tilt, the band members worked around the clock. "If you don't work 12 hours a day for The Roots, you haven't even woken up," jokes David Ivory, who's been recording the band since their early demos. Sessions for this album averaged around 16 hours, but several went as long as 22 and 24.
"They tag-teamed [me]," recalls Ivory. "First Ahmir would come in and do his part and then leave, then Kelo would lay down his tracks and then leave, and Tariq would come in and so on." All the while, members of The Roots' posse lined the walls of the cozy, 20-by-40-foot studio.
"Several times I counted as many as 20 people in here," Ivory remembers, surveying a space that should hold no more than five people comfortably, given all of the musical equipment. "Then there were the phone calls and pagers going off — it can get to be a real madhouse," he adds with a laugh.
The Roots take a stream-of-consciousness approach to their production, says the engineer. "A lot of it is planned and a lot of it just happens." Ahmir in particular thrives on experimenting in the studio, taking inspiration from the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix. Keyboards were recorded backwards, guest vocalist D'Angelo sang through a wah-wah pedal, and rapper Rahzel rhymed into a set of headphones to create some of the outstanding sounds of Illadelph Halflife.
The lyrics of songs like "Panic" and "Episodes" are reportage on life in Philadelphia, explains Tariq. Late night gunplay, senseless murder and the crumbling community are major parts of the scenery.
"Philadelphia is far different than it was when I was younger. Nowadays there's more murder, coke, rape and tension," says the rapper. "When I was 12 or 13, kids would fight and then be friends the next day and have resolved the situation. Now the same 12-year-old boy will say, 'Ah-ight, everything's cool' to end a fight and then see the kid the next day and shoot him."
The untimely death of two of his cousins influenced the lyrics to "Episodes"
"Push the panic button on your remote control and into the zone where I patrol is with the realm, cold soldierly, boldly fulfilling the saga foretold who got caught on the block for gold keeps the oldheads froze."
The oldheads are the elderly, too afraid to come out and sit on their stoops or take part in the community the way they once did. Kelo recalls Tariq crying while recording "Episodes," overwhelmed by the memory of his deceased relatives.
It's a rainy Monday night in late August, and Ahmir is taking his turn spinning discs at the retro lounge, Silk City. Suddenly, he scratches the record to a halt and then kickstarts the crowded dance floor back into action with a new remix of "Push Up Your Lighter," a track from Illadelph Halflife featuring Philly's own Bahamadia on the mike.
Heads begin nodding, behinds wiggling and compliments flying. Everyone in the room knows who it is even though the song is brand new. Ahmir says he likes to test out new material with the hometown crew.
Both he and Tariq agree that Silk City is one of the last bastions of true hip-hop in Philly, a place where people go to hear new music that isn't on the radio. Popular Delaware Avenue clubs like Gothum and Club Vegas usually stick to radio playlists supplied by the sponsoring radio stations, he explains. Earlier in the evening, he was booed for playing an album cut from chart-topping rapper, Nas.
"If you brought someone from out of town there, they probably wouldn't understand, seeing how small Silk City is, but this is a place for underground rap in Philly and it's the only club left for me that has a family vibe. I've been coming here since '90."
After all the lights have been turned on and the crowd ushered out, fellow DJ King Britt listens to a demo of Illadelph Halflife. Britt, a notable musician in his own right, praises the music for its wide range of dynamics. He pauses on the "What They Do" and comments on the tight arrangement and the catchy vocal riff courtesy of Rapheal Saadiq from Tony Toni Tone. "That's going to move a lot of albums," says Britt. Ahmir, uncertain how to take the compliment, responds modestly: "In a lot of ways it's formulaic, but it really is musical."
"What They Do" is undoubtedly one of the album's finest cuts, borrowing heavily from the world of R? and doo-wop with piano, vocal melody and bass playing off of the rapping. Saadiq's appearance also promises strong crossover potential with the R? market.
Ahmir shrugs off any suggestion that The Roots are trying to be more R?, emphatically spewing that he hates how watered down the genre has become. Though Illadelph Halflife has more commercial appeal, he adds it is The Roots and it is hip-hop. As for commerciality, he says that the rap market today is ailing.
"Hip-hop is no longer based on live lyrics and dope beats, it's about image," he reiterates, underscoring a thought that's preoccupied him over the past few weeks. Too much of the Philadelphia hip-hop audience unfortunately reflects this status quo, he adds, slagging off the materialistic "Versace" rap that infests Delaware Avenue clubs.
At the same time, The Roots are not against being popular. Wu-Tang Clan is one group that's been able to rack up multiplatinum sales without being a sellout, says the drummer.
Tariq sees this album as an "audition for all of Philly to let us back into the world of music," and in particular, the world of hip-hop, which has shunned the city for several years. To let them know that this town is filled with artists that can make music which is appealing both artistically and commercially. That thought propelled the band to put several local guests on the record, including Dice Raw, M.A.R.S., poet Ursula Rucker and Ahmir's father, Lee Andrews of Lee Andrews and the Hearts (who first instructed Ahmir in the world of music).
Tariq and Ahmir would like to start their own record company. Negotiations are currently in the works to secure a production deal for them. But there's still a lot they'd like to do to turn things around for Philadelphia hip-hop, including better labels, radio and clubs.
Right now, Ahmir says he's just trying to make a hip-hop album that isn't disposable like the hundreds that flit through the charts every year. Tariq would like the same, plus multiplatinum sales. If Illadelph Halflife is any indication of The Roots' ability to make their dreams come true, Philadelphia hip-hop may have a very promising future.
The Roots will have a midnight signing and performance to kick off the release of Illadelph Halflife on Tuesday, Sept. 24 at HMV records, 1510 Walnut St., 875-5100.