The Roots - Rising Down
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thephoenix.com Rating: 0
Following 2002s Phrenology, a stylistically schizophrenic album that left no pop-musical stone unturned, the Roots adopted the principle of addition by subtraction, and on Rising Down that ethos has reached a kind of logical conclusion. Drummer Amir ?uestlove Thompsons vision of political despair makes for some unrelentingly bleak shit: paranoid, roiling bass lines, ferocious breakbeat attacks, and little else. Black Thought, working with a team of guest MCs that includes Talib Kweli and Saigon, is as technically skilled as always, even if he does have a tendency to state the obvious. (Whats that you say? Global warming is bad?) For all their well-placed anger, these rappers seem a little paralyzed. Sure they can evoke school shootings, substance addiction, and terrorism, but what...
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