Music apart from music

The Roots are a group not anyone knows: While dudes keep fighting for chart rankings and sales figures, this band has always been a great name to people who tend to prefer the deeper, more soulful part of hip hop to the club banging jewels-cars-b******-et cetera-side of the game. Their latest work and album, “Phrenology”, shows what always has been their strength. Versatility, courage and the lack of musical limits.

Take “Rolling With The Heat” for example: Talib Kweli, one of the best of the not-so-famous rappers teams up with the whole Roots team and spits a shitload of superdope lyrics over an old-school drum set and a rough and down-to-earth tracks – a totally dissimilar style when one compares it to the opener “Rock You”, which is a hard DJ Scratch production which won’t let you have any sleep in the next couple of nights. Nelly Furtado supports the Band on “Sacrifice”, which is a typical Roots track, with some background vocals. “Break You Off” featuring Musiq is the track everyone should know by now due to its video airplay and rotation being the first single off the album, and even though it’s the supposed-to-be radio single, it’s still special, nothing of the usual rap-in-radios stuff has made its way into this track. Result is more band, more versatility, more music. “Pussy Galore” is produced by Scott Storch, he manages once again to give a song this certain twist it needs, and it also persuades lyrically. Jill Scott’s voice, well… word up.

 And that’s it. To people who are keen on listening to something different and something special, this is the go-to-disc. To people who are into commercial things, naw, this can’t be right. As far as I can tell, it’s a good album, the only problem I see is that there is no track that’s able to get 10 out of 10 points, it lacks of the real burner to my ears. But that’s certainly a matter of taste. Sure is that this is an album of quality with a unique style of musiq if not hip hop. It’s music apart from music.

 ***** out of SIX SHOTS.