Music

Roots: True to the name
They are not after commercial success. They just want to remind hip-hop where it came from and show where it can go.
By Rebecca Louie

A stray CD case lies open on the kettle drum. ?uestlove won't hit it, even though his eyes are closed and his drumsticks are moving faster than pistons (he's that good). It's a late summer afternoon, and the Roots, hip-hop's most celebrated live band, are in a Philadelphia studio, lost in the music. A dim green light reverberates with the constant beat, as lyricist Black Thought spits rhymes at an imaginary audience. Then, suddenly, everything stops.

"Dum-dum-da-da-da?" asks bassist Hub.

"Naw, man," says keyboardist Kamal. "Down a half step. Da-dum."

That's typical dialogue for the Roots, who often exchange ideas in the language of instrumentation after hitting a musical speed bump. The band members, all under age 35, are here to rehearse for a performance in Washington, D.C., as part of MTV2's "2$Bill" concert series, and they can't decide how to make the transition from one song to the next.

The irony, of course, is that the band is in a bit of a transitional phase itself. Once an underground "kick-ass live unit," the Roots are now a Grammy-winning act edging toward the mainstream. At a time when most rap still consists of studio-made programming that uses drum machines like the MPC2000XL or the SP1200, the Roots are pioneering a new movement that embraces live instruments. They want to expand the boundaries of hip-hop.

The Roots' music, inspired by everyone from Prince to avant-garde jazz guitarist James Blood Ulmer, often is based on studio jams that are like workshops, where the group conceives of, fleshes out and tinkers with musical ideas. It is a slow, complex process that results in the kind of layered, album-oriented sound that can be achieved only when musicians work from scratch.

The band's latest CD, "Phrenology", eludes classification. The songs, with themes ranging from drug addiction to the media's exploitation of women, are disciplined, abstract and even sometimes morbid. "Water" is an eight-minute musical hemorrhage that recalls the trippy meanderings of the Doors and Pink Floyd.

"We are true to our name," Black Thought says. "We're somewhat beneath the surface, and I think we'll always be to a certain extent." They make a point of playing up the differences between themselves and clichéd hip-hop acts: In their 1996 video for "What They Do", the Roots parodied rap's "Big Willie" lifestyle with fabulous scenes set on a posh suburban estate populated by women in bikinis and a roughneck crew. "Commercial success won't come to us from a change in the music," Black Thought adds. "It will gradually be the result of a change in the appetite of the audience."

These are guys who munch on vegan "chicken" hoagie sandwiches during session breaks and pose for PETA ad campaigns. "The less lifestyle we put out there," ?uestlove says, "the easier it is for people to concentrate on what we feel is important, which is the music."