The Roots - The Tipping Point
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The Roots - The Tipping Point
(Wednesday July 21, 2004 11:51 AM
)
Released on 12/07/04
Label: Geffen
It seems odd that after 15 years, six albums and a Grammy, The Roots should feel the need to explain themselves and their art. Yet "The Tipping Point", titled after a book of cultural theory that argues that every historical, artistic and commercial phenomenon reaches a moment at which it will either become ubiquitous or begin to fade, finds them doing just that.
By the Philadelphia rap band's standards, this is at first glance a fairly concise release, though its ten tracks include a Booker T & The MGs cover that clocks in at almost eleven minutes, and two extra tracks hidden between it and the "real" final track, "Why (What's Goin On?)". But compared to the relatively sprawling likes of the group's last album, the dazzling "Phrenology", or its stunning predecessor, "Things Fall Apart", it's still pretty focussed. Which at first makes it seem a little less substantial.
A few plays in, though, and that first impression fades. "The Tipping Point" is direct, not perfunctory; it is a record that sensibly realises that there's more chance of getting something across if it concentrates hard on saying what it wants. And the main point of this record is to re-establish the band's connection to and love of hip hop music. "The Tipping Point" seems to be a final attempt to undermine unenlightened criticism, to reassert the band as rap fundamentalists, to concentrate on rapper Black Thought's microphone skills and prove once and for all that The Roots are 4 Real.
Thus "Web" and "Boom!" take centre stage, BT wrapping his tongue round cadences and flows not heard since the late '80s. If the former recalls Big Daddy Kane, the latter is so much of an outright homage to the heroes of rap's "golden age" that Black Thought delivers a verse in a perfect, dead-on impersonation, and follows that up with a startling recreation of the splattershot cadences of Kane's Cold Chillin' labelmate, Kool G Rap. You have to listen twice – and carefully scan drummer and leader Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson's as-ever excellent sleeve note – to be sure neither veteran has actually dropped in on the song.
Second track "I Don't Care" sets out the record's other thematic stall early on, the chorus ("I don't care as long as...
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