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The Roots Stay Alive :: The Illadelph Halflife has turned into a decade-plus deep catalog of top-notch hip-hop, but where does rap’s premier band go now?

By Kevin Polowy   Photography by Phil Knott

05/05/08 :: URB 153

Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson is about to set the record straight. The congenial Roots drummer with a football lineman’s frame and unmistakable ‘fro is sitting dead-center in the middle of a large leather couch in the green room of a Chelsea recording studio. “We work hard and get paid accordingly,” he says, with barely a hint of conceit. “No one’s crying that they’re in the poor house. We do extremely well for what we do.”

What they do. It was the title of the second single off their third record, and the amount of play its sneakily satirical video pimped on a popular reality TV channel that once upon a time aired music programming helped elevate The Roots from niche alt-rap group to hip-hop mainstay. It’s what they’ve done—and done extremely well—that’s gotten them here. They’ve defied the odds and far surpassed hip-hop’s short life expectancy rate. They haven’t just survived, they’ve flourished. And with April’s Rising Down, they’ve now released an astounding 10 albums. (Or is it only eight? More on that later.)

“The secret to longevity is us being able to achieve some sort of fluidic chemistry,” says Black Thought, né Tariq Trotter, the Illadelphia, Pennsylvania outfit’s other charter member. It’s an hour later, and the 35-year-old wordsmith is beat, blunted and slouched in the corner of the same couch, tired eyes atypically visible sans trademark shades and Yankees cap tipped low. “We have an understanding of each others’ boundaries and each others’ limits.”

?uestlove attributes their success to following the Tao of Chuck D. While The Roots were on tour with Public Enemy in 1998, just prior to the release of Things Fall Apart, the revolutionary MC laid out for them his two-part equation for bringing the noise well into the future: Take it one day at a time, but also think in terms of chess moves. “While the average rapper thinks in terms of six months from now what they’ll be doing, they don’t really want to think, ‘What am I doing in 2011?,’” explains ?uestlove. “Especially for us. Do we really want to think, ‘Is there going to be room for us in this game when we’re 40?’ There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But as you get older there’s definitely the fear of the unknown, of what the future holds for you.” (For the record, Public Enemy has released 11 albums.)

Longtime fans probably look back and assume The Roots were just getting into the groove in ‘98. In truth, they were at a crossroads. They had popped onto the scene five years prior, riding their homegrown hero status in the 2-1-5 and year-long European residency (fueled by their first release, Organix) into a contract with Geffen Records. They proceeded to drop the jazztastic hip-hop classic Do You Want More?!!!??! in early 1995, and Native Tongue listeners swallowed it right up. They brought the jazz like A Tribe Called Quest and fused it with poetics a la Digable Planets, but with a decidedly harder Gang Starr-like edge. They were the natural descendants of a blossoming sound. Or at least that’s how we saw them. “We thought we were included in the first round of alternative hip-hop music,” admits ?uestlove. “We thought we were part of the Jungle Brother-De La-Tribe-Arrested Development-Gang Starr train. But in reality we got to the station just a little bit too late and the train went off the platform.”

That train’s departure gave life to the next movement. ?uestlove says they realized it about halfway through making 1996’s Illadelph Halflife: “There’s no such thing as individual success in music unless its part of a movement. Philadelphia International. The disco sound. The G-Funk West Coast sound…The Down South crunk…Snap music.” In 1997, with the help of Geffen and MCA, The Roots very deliberately scoured the waivers and label rosters, setting the wheels in motion to eventually lure like-minded free agents into their fold. They began with Common, who they pried from Relativity. They went after Mos Def, Talib Kweli and Pharoahe Monch. They attempted to get Slum Village and lost them, but still signed J Dilla.

“We pretty much just built the left-of-center roster around us,” says ?uestlove. Around the turn of the century, the movement expanded to neo-soul. There was Erykah Badu, who crooned the Jill Scott-penned hook on “You Got Me,” the lead single on their fourth LP, 1999’s Things Fall Apart, helping the group land a Grammy. But there was also D’Angelo, Alicia Keys, Scott, N’Dea Davenport, Musiq Soulchild, Bilal, Floetry—all became intertwined with The Roots crew. It was the movement. “That’s why all of a sudden Common and artists who only sold 200,000 units previously can now sell a million units,” ?uestlove says.

?uestlove is downplaying the impact of a certain Chicago superstar dropout in referencing the success of Common’s chart-topping last effort, Finding Forever, to make his point. And though the movement has certainly paid dividends for The Roots, there’s still a prevalent notion that the paper chase is harder on them than it is their contemporaries (thus the drummer’s earlier clarification). And that’s understandable. The Roots have watched as act after act they’ve grown with blows up. First there was The Fugees. Then OutKast. Then Lauryn Hill as a solo artist. Then the Black Eyed Peas. Then Cee-Lo with Gnarls Barkley. It’s like every act that headlined a Smokin’ Grooves tour with them found greener pastures. And don’t forget Kanye West. Or Eve or Beanie Siegel, two Illy Philly residents who used guest spots on Roots records as launch pads to lucrative commercial careers.

“But I kinda get the feeling that if we were awarded that amount of success, I don’t think we’d be here,” says ?uestlove.


Read the next page of this article or go listen to the album in its entirety (and watch the videos) here...