The Roots are a unique experience and provided a fresh and raw change from the heavily produced world of mainstream hip-hop when they crashed the Metro City stage on Saturday night. It is very rare to see a totally live band in a genre that’s known just as much for its DJs and producers as it is for its MCs, but The Roots are one of these and a damn good one at that. The crowd, a lot of whom would have been used to the ‘R&B Superclub’ tracks that normally fill Metros on a Saturday night, ate up The Roots’ electic mix of live and innovative hip-hop stylings. It is highly doubtful they would have ever heard or seen anything like it before.
The band fused jazz, rock, old school and R&B, sped it up to moments that wouldn’t have been out of place in a drum n bass club then slowed it down and stripped it back to lounge music pace. They are a group of genuinely talented musicians, each a master of their own craft, totally literate with the language of music and how to convey it. Entering the stage through a haze of smoke, a lot of which was due to punters blatantly ignoring the new smoking laws (Snoop Dogg would have been proud), the two members that started it all, MC Black Thought and ?uestlove, opened the show with hip-hop at its purest. Just an MC and a man behind a drum kit, they transformed the Metro City stage into a Philadelphian street corner and the crowd became the passers by. With Black Thought rhyming at breakneck speed and ?uestlove keeping a tighter beat than any drum machine could, they made sure everyone knew this was not going to be your average hip-hop show.
With Black Thought introducing themselves as The Legendary Roots, the rest of the band entered the stage and they blasted into high-voltage party starter Here I Come, from new album Game Theory. Reducing the pace for the next few tracks and putting the spotlight on their instrumental supremacy, the crowd seemed to lose interest and respect, with most turning and chewing the ear off of the person next to them. They should have paid attention though, as there are few hip-hop acts that can perform live jazz as well as The Roots. The crowd’s interest did return however with Triple J regular Long Time and then were completely won over by a tongue-in-cheek medley of radio friendly, easily recognisable, mainstream hip-hop tracks. It was a beautiful irony that it took a medley of mainstream tracks to absorb the crowd who were there to see one of the most alternative, nonconformist hip-hop bands in history.
The band appeared to enjoy it as well and could be seen laughing when they broke into the tedious Shake Dat Laffy Taffy (Wassup to All Da Hoez) (the title says it all) hook, then proceeded to run through tracks like Sexy Back (JT) and Salt n Pepa’s Push it, much to their humour and the crowd’s delight. With the party now officially started, they made a relieving return to their own compositions and performed tracks from right across their extensive catalogue for two brilliant hours, playing early tracks like Pass the Popcorn, breakthrough tracks like The Next Movement, Grammy award winning track You Got Me and more recent tracks from their Game Theory album. Guitarist Captain Kirk Douglas was a definite highlight of the show and appeared to come straight from the Jimi Hendrix school of rock, while bassist Hub made jazz riffs look astonishingly easy before ?uestlove performed a scintillating drum solo that had the crowd removing their jaws from the floor. They concluded the show the way they started with a leg breaking dancefloor killer and made sure the crowd wouldn’t be sleeping until noon the next day.
It was a shame The Roots were not able to make the Blues and Roots Festival as they would have no doubt been one of the highlights of that weekend and introduced their music to a crowd that would have been extremely appreciative. That said, the fact they played their own show meant they could showcase the whole Roots experience and it was one that was a privilege to bear witness to.
