A few years ago, the Roots were musing over how to make their music-industry career pay. With sales of their critically lauded albums solid but rarely spectacular, the veteran Philadelphia hip-hop group appeared to have little option but to tour non-stop to make ends meet.
They resolved this situation in a most ingenious manner by becoming the house band on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night NBC chat show. This unlikely arrangement has not been without controversy: when Fallon interviewed a leading Republican congresswoman, the Roots welcomed her to the stage with a blast of Fishbone’s Lyin’ Ass Bitch.
Financial security has freed up the band to make their albums even more confrontational and challenging. Last year’s … And Then You Shoot Your Cousin was a dark, 30-minute concept piece about the soul-destroying inequities facing the black US underclass. They play nothing at all from this difficult document tonight.
Instead, we get a sprawling, diffuse show that confirms that the Roots are a hip-hop group like no other. Indeed, this frantic eight-piece is more like a cross between a funk-soul revue and an abstract jazz troupe: with a comb wedged into his voluminous Afro, band leader Questlove surveys proceedings from behind his drums like a benign ringmaster.
And what proceedings they are. Songs like The Fire and Get Busy vanish into a welter of cosmic jazz-funk, or a blizzard of Aphex Twin-style electro-terrorism. Rapper Black Thought spits in tongues as Damon Bryson staggers under the weight of a sousaphone. Questlove subjects us to a drum solo of a length last heard from Cozy Powell, then oversees shock-and-awe assaults on Guns N’ Roses, Lead Belly and even the Shadows’ Apache. If it keeps their freak-flag flying, let’s hope the Roots don’t give up the day job.
- This review was amended on 13 July 2015. The term “iniquities” was incorrectly used in this sentence: “Last year’s … And Then You Shoot Your Cousin was a dark, 30-minute concept piece about the soul-destroying inequities facing the black US underclass.”
