Hip-hop for serious times

THE ROOTS took the stage on The Late Show with David Letterman on April 28 dressed almost entirely in black. They wore T-shirts and pins denouncing the recent verdict in the Sean Bell case.

It was an act of protest that eerily pointed out how few things have really changed in the so-called "post-civil rights" era. The next day, the Roots' 10th album, Rising Down, was released on the 16th anniversary of the Rodney King verdict.

Rising Down does indeed fit the chaotic and frustrating times we live in. It is sonically dense, often dark and atmospheric, emotionally fraught and confrontational. The subject matter is hard-hitting and unflinching. The group wastes no time setting the album's tone on the opening title track, employing steady-flowing drums and a simmering guitar-line, as MC Black Thought, along with guests Mos Def and Styles P, take on the wealth gap, racism and global warming:

Between the greenhouse gases and earth spinning off its axis
Got Mother Nature doing back flips, the natural disasters
It’s like 80 degrees in Alaska, you in trouble if you not an Onassis
It ain't hard to tell that the conditions is drastic
Just turn on the telly, check for the news flashin'

The Roots have long represented the leading edge of "conscious" hip-hop. Rising Down seems to be a gathering of some of hip-hop's most political artists--from Common and Saigon to Mos Def and Talib Kweli. According to drummer Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, Rising Down is "probably our most political album to date dealing with addiction, nihilism, hypocritical double standards in the prison system and overall life in Philadelphia."

While the group's hometown of Philly plays a central role on many tracks, the scope of issues it takes on means that these stories could be about almost anywhere.

The track "Criminal" puts the term on its head, telling the story about how someone is forced into a world of violence by powers bigger than themselves. In a recent interview, Black Thought described the song's message: "It's about being persecuted and having no other alternative." Adds ?uestlove, "You could also see it from the angle of the Rockefeller [anti-drug] laws. Certain groups of people get persecuted and others get away with it."

Repression and violence are all part of the unsettling stories in this album. The subjects of "The Singer" are an American school shooter, an African child soldier and a suicide bomber in Iraq. The track is at some points disturbing, but its frankness and willingness to get inside the heads of the alienated and oppressed make it hard to disagree with.

Moments like these have led some in the music press to label Rising Down a downer. Most reviews understandably have focused on the album's harsh soundscapes and brutal honesty. Rolling Stone criticized Black Thought's lyrics as being "so terminally stern that even his jokes sound like harangues."

Then again, the Roots have never really given much credence to what outside forces have to say about them, including the music industry. In rap, a genre constantly painted into a corner, this is not easy.

"[T]he new minstrel image of Black people is in vogue now," says Thought. "That's the image that's being sold to you. It's really hard to hold on to your dignity and not resort to shucking and jiving to sell records."

This is taken up on "I Will Not Apologize," a proudly defiant track about refusing to back down from one's artistic principles. The track is also one of the album's most eclectic and catchy songs, relying heavily on contributions from Talib Kweli and samples from Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.

What most reviews miss is that by unabashedly portraying life as it is, Rising Down raises the possibility of something better. Positioned close to the end of the album, with its buzzy synthesizers and snare-rolls, "The Show" (featuring Common and Dice Raw) is militant in its sense that another world isn't just possible but necessary:

They got hopes and plans of gettin' rid of me
I'll hit 'em like Ethiopia hit up Italy
Swift as the bullet that killed King and Kennedy
You know the battle is on for infinity

For the Roots to maintain this kind of uncompromising outlook had undoubtedly been a challenge. In an interview with Vanity Fair, ?uestlove talked about the demoralization that many politically conscious artists have suffered during the Bush administration: "It's just a numbing period for artists left-of-center. Why did it take Erykah [Badu] eight years to do a follow-up record? Why haven't you heard from [Rage Against the Machine's] Zack de la Rocha? D'Angelo? Lauryn Hill? Bilal? All the left-of-center, politically charged minority artists--Dave Chappelle included--like, what happened?"

Despite all the talk of this album being a lecture to a world that doesn't get it, Rising Down delivers a lot more truth and hope than you possibly could from anything on the campaign trail.