GF Hip Hop Heaven

[Paul]

Something on the hardest working band in hip hop (by the way, the comparison with Hey Ya is weird; Birthday Girl is shit):

It's like a jungle sometimes ...


They are a hip-hop purist's dream, constantly touring and constantly praised. But behind the scenes, the Roots have a fight on their hands. Angus Batey joins them on the road

Friday April 25, 2008
The Guardian


Not playing the corporate hip-hop game ... The Roots



It's spring break on the campus of Purdue University, Indiana, and T-shirted teens flop on the porches of their fraternity houses, drinking beer and goofing around. In the art deco lobby of the Elliott Hall of Music, there are portraits of mortar board-sporting academics and coat-tailed conductors; the 6,000-seat auditorium, normally the preserve of classical musicians and university bands, looks like it hasn't changed much since the 1947, when the aeronautical engineering course welcomed a new undergraduate by the name of Neil Armstrong.

Staid and somewhat remote (the college dominates West Lafayette, 65 miles north of Indianapolis and 120 south of Chicago), ranked a little outside the top 50 universities in the US, Purdue doesn't scream "must-visit destination for hip-hop act bent on superstardom". But for the Roots - one of rap's longest-running outfits, and by some margin the best live hip-hop band in the world - it's a vital part of their current plans.
"We have to do 200 shows a year just to stay above the water level," says ?uestlove - Ahmir Thompson - the band's drummer, leader and - his six-foot-plus figure being topped off with an unruly Afro - most recognisable member. "Our greatest months are March to May, and September to November," he explains. "That's the spring and fall breaks for colleges. That's what pays our bills. All these college dates are just so the water can go to chin level, or maybe nose level. But after May, it's a roll of the dice - survival of the fittest."

As should already be clear, the Roots are no ordinary rap group. Formed by ?uestlove and rapper Black Thought (Tariq Trotter) in Philadelphia in the early 1990s, they adopted live instruments rather than use a DJ because their first gigs were as buskers. One of the handful of hip-hop artists to really take Public Enemy's globe-trotting touring template to heart, they hit the road in 1992, and have rarely been off it since.

Sixteen years, six more albums, a Grammy and uncountable gigs later, the musical world the Roots inhabit has changed almost beyond recognition, and only Ahmir and Tariq remain from their original line-up: yet the need to prove themselves, both commercially and creatively, endures. After being dismissed as a diversion aimed at what their friend Common memorably described in a verse on a Roots song as "coffee shop chicks and white dudes", for years they had to fight to be seen as serious hip-hop artists. That battle was won, but the victory has been bittersweet.

The Roots' music echoes rap's late-1980s "golden age" and eschews the fads of the day to restate, again and again, its makers' belief in the power and necessity of innovation, skilled delivery and compelling content. But despite the constant touring, an almost unequivocally laudatory press and numerous acclaimed outside projects (?uestlove's CV includes producing albums for D'Angelo and Erykah Badu, while his drum work has appeared on records by everyone from Jay-Z to MOR songwriter John Mayer and country's Hank Williams Jr), not quite enough people have been listening: even the best-selling Roots records have stubbornly refused to top the million mark. They are in a complicated position - a hip-hop purist's dream, their adherence to the music's original values places them ever further away from its conservative commercial focus. It's not a situation ?uestlove finds particularly comfortable.

"When all's said and done and history's written, I don't wanna be the underdog," he sighs, his considerable frame leaning back on a hotel sofa the following afternoon in another city. "The problem is, hip-hop is more about celebrity, and not about the art form; that's why it's increasingly harder and harder to make records like we make. When people hear our music, we're kinda banking on them missing how hip-hop was - it's easier for someone over 30 to get our records than it is an 18-year-old, who has no reference point whatsoever. We're banking on their nostalgia to keep us alive."

After years of being hip-hop's nearly men, fate seemed to have belatedly smiled on the Roots in 2005, when Jay-Z - a friend whom the band had backed on his MTV Unplugged performance and at his "retirement" gig at Madison Square Garden - brought them to Def Jam. But the star's tenure as head of the venerable imprint was hardly an unalloyed success: and Game Theory, the Roots' 2006 debut for the label, has been one of the lowest-selling albums of their career. With Jay-Z gone, the band are once again precariously placed. Criticism of the way Def Jam is marketing and promoting new album Rising Down - or failing to, depending on perspective - is rife among the fans posting on the messageboard at the Roots-owned website, Okayplayer.com, and among the most vocal critics are members of the band and their manager.

"Def Jam is a whole new environment," says ?uestlove, with a rather more affable sense of resignation than can be read between the lines of his extensive Okayplayer postings. "If you're not winning there, it's like you don't exist. I don't think it's a vindictive thing, and I'm not trying to cry about it - but that's the sad truth. Every other week, executives get fired at that label. Two of our product managers are hangin' on by the skin of their teeth as we talk: I'll be shocked if they still have jobs next week, or even by the end of this interview. That's just how it is now. Prince [another friend and admirer] says all the time, 'Get off the label! Get off the label!' But after all our bills are paid and our families taken care of, there's no spare $200,000 for us to be without a label."

So the relentless road work continues, both as a means of alerting the world to the existence of a new Roots album, and to sustain the group at its most basic level. The good news is that they seem to be winning over new fans. At Purdue and, the following day, on an outdoor stage in the middle of the leafy campus of the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, the band's two-hour show is a masterclass in live rap performance, ensuring that both the committed Roots devotees and curious newcomers alike get plenty out of it.

As well as ?uestlove and Black Thought, the group's present incarnation includes long-standing keyboardist Kamal Gray, guitarist "Captain" Kirk Douglas, new bass player Glen Biddle, percussionist Frank "Frankie Knuckles" Walker and Damon Bryson, who, uniquely in hip-hop history, plays sousaphone (he has been rechristened Tuba Gooding, Jr). It's a supremely tight outfit, and no time is wasted - at their Purdue soundcheck, Ahmir runs Kirk and Glen through a half-hour rehearsal, honing a riff that turns up for barely a couple of minutes during the gig - but with a line-up so diverse they retain the capacity to surprise.

The set includes tracks from every phase of their career, as well as a medley of snatches of iconic hip-hop moments and, mid-set, an angry, impassioned, near 20-minute reading of Bob Dylan's Masters of War, its first verse sung by Douglas to the tune of The Star Spangled Banner, before unfurling in blasts of Hendrix-style guitar and featuring a drum solo of ballistic proportions from Thompson. The message, in Pennsylvania in particular, only days away from the state's Democratic primary, could not be more abundantly clear - though ?uestlove, who has done stints volunteering for Barack Obama's campaign, gives it a spoken introduction just to be sure.

Rising Down doesn't include anything quite so intuitive, but the political content and purposeful tone often place its tracks in the protest song tradition. It's an excellent album, and a very serious one. "Things have gotten progressively darker over the past few years," agrees Black Thought, carefully building a joint from the shell of a cigar in the lounge on the band's tour bus after the Pittsburgh show, "and I think the music reflects that" - all the more so with the band's decision to relegate Birthday Girl, a pop song featuring Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump which could yet give them their own Hey Ya-style hit, to iTunes-only bonus track status in the US (it features on the UK version of the CD).

Unfortunately, there's never been a time where making a great LP makes such little difference to a musician's career. ?uestlove is an erudite, passionate, music connoisseur who relishes and understands the drama that lies behind classic records: his sleevenotes on Roots albums are as vital and energised as his playing on them. It is his curse not only to find himself and his band in an almost impossible situation, but to fully understand how powerless he is to change it.

"The idea of a label is about to fall apart," he says, resigned to an uncertain fate, but not bitter about it. "We're just tryin' to hang on as long as we can, so that we can figure out a solution so that we don't have to live hand-to-mouth every time."

· Rising Down is released on Monday on Mercury/Def Jame

[Thomo123]

Which snoop song has the intro with the kids tlking about what they wanna do when they grow up....the one where the young snoop wants to be a 'motherfucking hustler...'?

[Jorge Borge]

Originally Posted by Paul

They are a hip-hop purist's dream, constantly touring and constantly praised. But behind the scenes, the Roots have a fight on their hands. Angus Batey joins them on the road

Cheers for that. Really interesting read, particularly the aspect about his audience. Mainstream Hip Hop has changed unrecognisably for the worst, unfortunately. I still have videos from Yo MTV Raps from the early 90's and the style we were fed as the mainstream then is now seen as a forgotten classic. Obviously there's still good stuff being made but if it's not got a mass marketable style it's obviously not given a chance.

Also interesting what was said about the death of labels which is something Thom Yorke said about the release of Rainbows; something about it being an archaic business model run by dinosaurs. I don't profess to know what that means, however, but presumably big things are afoot and change is on the horizon. Hopefully not too many of the good guys will suffer in the fall-out.

[Vivaldo]

Originally Posted by Thomo123

Which snoop song has the intro with the kids tlking about what they wanna do when they grow up....the one where the young snoop wants to be a 'motherfucking hustler...'?

Whats up G?

Hustlin?

YouTube - Snoop doggy dogg - Gz and hustlas

[Top of the Kop]

cant remember whether i already posted this?

YouTube - eMC - Winds of Change

[Top of the Kop]

My fav rapper of all time - Big L

first ever song - YouTube - Big L - Devils Son

Freestyle session with Jay Z (7 minutes long, well worth listening to. performed before Jay Z had "blown up") - YouTube - Big L and Jay-Z Freestyle

YouTube - big l-all black

YouTube - D.I.T.C. - Day One - performing with the awesome D.I.T.C - he rips up the second verse

if you listen to these songs and still dont think he is the best rapper to ever touch the mic then...well thats your opinion i spose. enjoy

[Top of the Kop]

YouTube - Main Source - Live at the BBQ (Nasir's 1st appearance) - Nas's first ever appearence on wax (cant remember if i have already posted this?)

YouTube - Is Dr. Dre gay? - one of dr dre's first appearences on wax too, those were the days....

[Vivaldo]

Originally Posted by Top of the Kop

YouTube - Main Source - Live at the BBQ (Nasir's 1st appearance) - Nas's first ever appearence on wax (cant remember if i have already posted this?)

YouTube - Is Dr. Dre gay? - one of dr dre's first appearences on wax too, those were the days....

Remember this YouTube - Nas - The Message

This was on repeat for such a long time when it first came out...

[Jorge Borge]

Just been listening to this and thought I'd share it with you all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiVwxq0NTkQ

[Jorge Borge]

And the remix (not as good, in my opinion):

YouTube - Black Sheep - Similak Child

[Paul]

Return of the great rap rebel


Public Enemy's 1988 album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, was a landmark in hip hop, as politically powerful as it was musically inventive. On its 20th anniversary, band leader Chuck D tells Sean O'Hagan why now is the right time to re-form

Sunday May 18, 2008
The Observer


Chuck D is at his local grocery store in Roosevelt, Long Island when I call him. 'It's my daughter's birthday,' he explains, 'so I'm kind of busy.' Surreally, I find myself asking him about rap, race and politics while he queues at the deli counter, then pays for his purchases. Given that it's 8am in New York, this does not take too long.
'It depends what you mean by early,' he says, when I mention that I've never interviewed anyone before breakfast before. 'Me, I got to get up just to keep up. I'm a multi-tasker. I was down with that stuff before they invented the term. You ask the questions, bro', and I'll roll with it.'

Carlton Douglas Ridenhour, aka Chuck D - the D stands for Dangerous - has been rolling with it for 20 years now. He still walks it like he talks it, still converses in extended sound bites, still rages against America's mainstream political machine. He's funny with it, though, and there's a vulnerability about him that shows from time to time, mostly when he talks about himself - which is not very often - rather than about his life's mission, which he expounds relentlessly. 'Governments are the cancer of civilisation,' he says at one point. 'Government and culture are two diametrically opposed forces - the one blinds and oppresses, the other uplifts and unites.'
Chuck D's name, and his now familiar spiel, is synonymous with a time in the mid- to late-1980s when hip hop first erupted overground in a blaze of creativity and controversy. Back then, his group, Public Enemy, were the most radical and groundbreaking outfit to emerge from the East Coast rap underground, consciously aligning themselves with the pioneers of politically aware funk and soul, the likes of James Brown, Curtis Mayfield and Gil Scott-Heron.

'We wanted our music to be the aural equivalent of black people wanting to scream out after having been silenced for so long,' says Chuck D. 'It was like the blues in that way, I guess.' Public Enemy, though, were harder and more inflammatory than their predecessors, peddling a political line that seemed, at times, to posit the Black Panthers' message of violent revolution. At one point, disappointingly, they aligned themselves with the separatist ideology of notorious demagogue Louis Farrakhan.

Their song titles alone spoke volumes: 'Yo! Bum Rush the Show', 'My Uzi Weighs a Ton', 'Fight the Power', 'By the Time I Get to Arizona', the latter track a ferocious counterblast to the perceived racism and negativity of the various American states that refused to recognise Martin Luther King Day.

'No one has been able to approach the political power that Public Enemy brought to hip hop,' Adam Yauch, aka MCA of the Beastie Boys, told Rolling Stone. 'I put them on a level with Bob Marley... but where Marley's music sweetly lures you in, then sneaks in the message, Chuck D grabs you by the collar and makes you listen.'

The group's critically acclaimed masterpiece is their second album, I988's It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Basically a sociopolitical concept album, it rewrote the rules of hip hop, until then primarily a singles medium. Now, 20 years on, the group are set to perform the album in its entirety in three much awaited British concerts in London, Glasgow and Manchester. It will be a chance for many of us to remember hip hop's golden age and for a younger audience to catch a glimpse of perhaps the greatest rap crew ever: Chuck D, Flavor Flav, Terminator X, the Bomb Squad, Hank and Keith Shocklee, not to mention the somewhat notorious Professor Griff - the Farrakhan disciple - and the paramilitary-style Security of the First World posse.

The young Public Enemy, I tell Chuck D, were always going to be a hard act for the older Public Enemy to follow.

'Well, we're going to find some way to move it forward,' he says, 'and maybe mess around with things a bit, too. It won't be like a photocopy of the album, that's for sure.' Is he nervous? 'A little bit. I mean, just trying to remember all the lyrics is going to be hard. Some people have a gift for that, but I never had. Always found it difficult. It's going to be interesting, I can tell you that. We ain't all been together in a room for an age and we got some figuring out to do when we meet up next week. But, hey, what's the worst thing that can happen? You're going to write a bad review? Ain't no big deal. We're beyond all that now.'

It is 20 years since I first met Chuck D in Def Jam's then tiny office on the Bowery in New York, while various other hip hop luminaries - Eric B, LL Cool J - lounged around, wearing gold chains over their bright tracksuits. Chuck D was different: dressed down, serious, articulate. His music was different, too. That summer, everywhere you went in New York, you would hear a tell-tale thumping bass line overlaid with a repetitive sample of furiously screeching horns. It was the intro to 'Rebel Without a Pause', the first signal of Public Enemy's otherness and their most sonically extreme statement of intent.

At the NME, where I worked, hip hop had precipitated an office war, with the indie-rock traditionalists lined up against the modernists who sensed early on that hip hop was the most vital cultural moment since punk. I was on the latter side and Public Enemy's 'Rebel Without a Pause' was all the evidence we needed to back up our stance. It was a record as revolutionary in its way as the Sex Pistols' 'Anarchy in the UK', but infinitely more ambitious.

'We knew we had to be different and we had to jolt people with the sound as well as the lyrics,' says Chuck. 'It was about urgency. It had to sound like a wake-up call. Then, when we were making It Takes a Nation of Millions..., we knew we had to take it further still, and make a What's Going On for the hip hop generation. The concept, the musical segues, the beats per minute - no one had done that sort of thing before. It reflected the past in terms of our influences, but it sounded like nothing else you'd ever heard. People still come up to me and tell me that to this day.'

These days, people tend to come up to Chuck D after a lecture rather than gig. He calls himself a 'raptivist' and spreads his message, which remains remarkably unchanged, through constant lecture tours of American campuses and on the global noticeboard that is the Public Enemy website. He has also published a bestselling book, Fight the Power

In a way, he is the Noam Chomsky of hip hop, a full-time activist who still takes his cue from the community-based politics of the Black Panthers in the late Sixties.

'I don't understand the direction hip hop has gone in,' he says quietly, sounding resigned rather than angry. 'Rap is supposed to be about keeping it real and not relinquishing your roots in the community. Without that, it's just posturing. Somebody who claims to speak for the hood don't need no private jet.'

They probably don't need to appear on reality TV either, though, which is what Flavor Flav did a few years back, famously falling for Sly Stallone's ex, Brigitte Nielsen, on a show called The Farm, this after a much publicised crack habit, a string of traffic violations and a spell on Rikers Island on an attempted murder rap.

'I'm very happy Flav has an itinerary right now,' says Chuck, with just a trace of irony. 'I chose him to be in Public Enemy back in the day and when you choose someone because he's so way out there, you got to go with the flow. Put it this way, he ain't ever going to behave like you or me or anyone else on the planet. He's a one-off. And, believe me, one is enough.'

I ask him, in conclusion, the inevitable question: does he, as an avowed hater of governments, support Barack Obama? He falls uncharacteristically silent for a moment or two. 'I support him for all the right and all the wrong reasons,' he says. 'It's a moment, you know, it's definitely a moment, but let's not kid ourselves, it will be very hard for him to do the job. They'll make it hard for him, as hard as they can. To tell the truth, I believed in the dream ticket to begin with. I thought that he could be the greatest Vice President ever. I think, in a way, he'd have more power as Vice President.'

Does he think, though, that Obama has a real chance of becoming the first black President? 'That's the really interesting question. How will white America respond when push comes to shove? Barack Obama may galvanise the black vote but there's not enough of us. And McCain may well pick Condoleezza Rice as his running mate to split the black vote, too. One thing you can be sure of, whatever happens, the racial insecurity of America will be tested to the limit.'

In a way, that's what Chuck D has been doing for the past 20 odd years, testing the racial insecurity of America through his words and his music. For all his apocalyptic pronunciations, he remains at heart an optimist.

'I spread the message of hope and of unity,' he says, sounding upbeat once more. 'That's what gets me up in the morning. I can tell you what is wrong, but I can't tell you how to fix it. I'm a raptivist, not a politician. I deal in hope.'


It Takes a Nation... tributes

We asked six well-known fans what Public Enemy's ground-breaking 1988 album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, meant to them.

Roots Manuva, rapper:
I was about 14 or 15 when it came out. The first time I heard 'Bring the Noise' was in a cornershop in south London and I thought: 'What the hell is that?' It was unlike anything else that had come before.

Hip hop had been thought of as a little community thing. It Takes a Nation... showed you could put hip hop in arenas and stadiums. And there was a message: they were talking about stuff like mass thought control and media manipulation. At the time, I didn't really get it, but these things crop on my records now - it was the seeds that Chuck D planted. He was a proper scholar. There was a good groove to dance to as well, a little bit of sugar for the medicine.

As an MC, I was a straight carbon copy Chuck D rip-off MC; nearly everyone was. I don't listen to it as much now but we still have boys' nights in where we listen to the old stuff. In that album, you can hear the roots of all music afterwards.

Kwame Kwei-Armah, playwright and actor:
I was ushered into manhood by Malcolm X on the one hand and Public Enemy on the other. I was 21 when It Takes a Nation... came out and it was the most exciting thing to happen to me that year. It is one of the few times that I listened to an album and cried. I cannot explain how it felt to hear these young black men have the boldness and the presence of mind to articulate the things that we never speak about in public. It was bold, frightening and the music was dope - they'd hit the holy grail.

Chuck D may have written it with black America in mind, but it spoke about a diasporic experience that I could relate to as a black Brit. He was talking about how we up our game as a community and how we release ourselves from mental slavery. That resided with me, it inspired me, it made me part of the man I am today. My triptych of plays at the National Theatre was all about that. I still listen to it and when I play it to my children, they say: 'Yeah, Dad. That's rockin'.'

Ninja, rapper/singer with the Go! Team:
I must have been about nine or 10 when I first heard It Takes a Nation... My brother got me into loads of rap albums and that was all I listened to. My heart lies with the hip hop of that era.

Hip hop is about self-expression and especially about a voice for black people. That record was about artists who had something to say and were saying it. They would have known there was a chance they wouldn't get airplay but they still went ahead with it.

The music has been a massive influence on the Go! Team, particularly the way they use their horns - that blaring sound. And there's a militant feel to their sound - an energy and a forcefulness that I really like.

We asked Chuck D to be on a track on our latest album, Proof of Youth. Sadly some idiot went and invented the internet so we didn't get to meet him [he sent his contribution remotely], but it's a massive compliment that he chose to be on one of our songs. For me, he's a legend.

Tim Westwood, DJ:
I knew Chuck D well. I'd been to see him in Long Island and every time the band came to the UK, we'd stay up all night in my flat talking hip hop. So I used to get the music mad early. I had It Takes a Nation... six weeks before everyone else. It was like I had what everybody wanted to hear so my job was to be the gatekeeper, to open the gates and play the music.

We played this warehouse party in Harlesden that summer and when the sun came up, I remember playing 'Rebel Without a Pause'. The party was packed and I just put the same track on over and over again. It was sending people into a frenzy, they so wanted it. That album was the defining moment not just in Public Enemy's career but in hip hop. Until then, there were hits but people didn't perceive it as a culture young people would grow up and believe in. This had such mass appeal, white kids were buying into the black rage of it. And it meant so much to the black kids growing up.

Bonnie Greer, playwright and critic:
I was in New York in the Eighties when rap was being born. It Takes a Nation... raised the game. Before, there had been a lot of really silly rhymes and samples, but this served notice that you couldn't do any more stupid stuff in hip hop. It wasn't on. They changed things not only in terms of content, but also in terms of the sound. They made this sound kaleidescope and it was so musically sophisticated and very inclusive which you wouldn't think a black, politically influenced rap album could be.

You could be a white guy with a briefcase walking down Wall Street and you would know 'Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos'. Public Enemy were five or six years younger than me and it made me feel that the torch was being carried on, that there was a generation moving the black power and youth movement stuff on, taking the fight to where it needed to be taken. I think it has aged well. People in their early teens now would relate to it.

Patrick Neate, writer:
I wasn't really into hip hop clubs, but when It Takes a Nation... came out and was being played everywhere, that was the point of hip hop's maximum gravity. If you were in range, it was game over: I wasn't going anywhere else. It was full of stuff that seemed exotic and exciting. I was 17 and at that age you want to be angry. And because everything was in vernacular it was mysterious: like Five-O (the cops), I didn't know what that meant.

I wrote a book about hip hop around the world. This MC from Rio told me 'It was Public Enemy that made me realise I was being crapped on because I was black'. That album was a huge epiphany. It made him think about what it meant to be from Rio and me about what it meant to be from Putney. From opposite ends of the racial and financial and political spectrum, people were introduced to racial politics.

Interviews by Ally Carnwath

[ticklemeclemo]

Would love to go and see PE again.... anyone going to any of these shows. Surely you are going Paul?

[Paul]

Originally Posted by ticklemeclemo

Would love to go and see PE again.... anyone going to any of these shows. Surely you are going Paul?

I have children and therefore no life of my own.

[theghost]