The Roots - 'Rising Down' (Def Jam) Released 28/04/08

While hip-hop may have lost its way in recent years, what with ringtone rap and repetitive radio play taking over the art form, there are still a few artists and groups who combine the original elements of the genre and keep it moving for those who remember when hip-hop was hip-hop.

The Roots are a Philadelphia band who together have single handedly kept real and raw rap on the map. Combining important subject matters with live instrumentation, Black Thought, ?uestlove, Kamal Gray, Frank Knuckles, Captain Kirk and Owen Biddle are music. Respecting where they came from and the history of the music that they play, The Roots will forever continue to break through barriers with the type of experimental hip-hop that cannot be mirrored by just anyone.
 
Now on their tenth album, 'Rising Down' is a very political event released on the 16th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots. With an all star supporting cast, which includes the likes of Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Common, this project is quite possibly one of the group’s finest moments. While it’s very hard to recreate the type of quality heard on their Grammy award winning album “Things Fall Apart”, they’ve got pretty close with this banger.

Opening with an argument caught on tape between the group’s members, it’s obvious from the get go that The Roots are taking it back on this one. Purifying their musical souls so that they don’t get sucked in to the bullshit we today call the music industry, the album’s title track, which features both Mos Def and Styles P, is an eye opener where no subject relating to the changing of the worldly guard is left untouched. With a thoughtful underlining beat Mos Def spits, “Tonight at noon watch a bad moon rising/ Identities in crisis and conflict diamonds.”

With no sign of letting up, other tracks that feed your intellect include the gutter 'Criminal'. Truck North and Saigon join forces with The Roots crew and speak the truth about getting locked down, what happened before the crime was committed, the aftermath, and the state of the world’s judicial system. While it’s rare to find a track by The Roots that holds no intellectual measure, 'Rising Down' houses a few songs that play on both sides of the fence. 'Get Busy' is a hardcore record with a serious edge to it, mainly due to its evil toned instrumentation, but also comes off as if it was a fun record to make. The show stealing verse on the cut however doesn’t go to the band’s frontman Black Thought, but instead the Prince of the Roc, Peedi Peedi - his clever merging of comedy and rugged rhyming aid the record in creating the perfect hip-hop environment for fans of underground spitting. His line, “Fuck the internet/ Buy a baseball bat break a bootlegger’s leg,” hits hard and makes you smirk all at the same time.

With the inclusion of the odd skit here and there that takes it back, namely the '@15' interlude which hears Black Thought spit a freestyle at the age of 15, and the final two upbeat records, the Chrisette Michele and Wale featured 'Rising Up' and Patrick Stump (of Fall Out Boy)  assisted 'Birthday Girl', this album is structured in a way that cries out excellence. The Roots rarely make a boo boo when it comes to music. Whether you’re an indie chick, metal head or hip-hop historian, 'Rising Down' is an album you can’t afford not to introduce to your ears.