A Review of The Roots' How I Got Over, Part Two

Or, "Variations on Flames".

07 DillaTude: The Flight of Titus – “SV and The Roots be the family tree, The Roots and SV be the family…” The Roots’ and particularly ?uestlove’s ties to Dilla and SV are over a decade deep and poignantly strong. So I expect to hear nods to Dilla on every album The Roots put out. (I suppose as long as ?uestlove lives to beat a drum, Dilla too will live through, as Dilla’s ever-so-offbeat drum programming profoundly influences the way ?uestlove plays his kit on almost every project in which he is involved, hip-hop or not.) This interlude consciously evokes the same spacey, jazzy minimalism that marked much of Dilla’s output.

Spacey may be an appropriate adjective here, as the interlude is also a nod to Titus Glover, also known as Slum Villager Baatin, who passed away in the summer of 2009. Baatin was the most lyrically abstract member of the group, rapping on any topic through a prism of spiritualism and mysticism. But he was also the most haunted by personal demons, and that tenuous tug between both sides of his personality imposed upon Baatin an enigmatic aura. This interlude serves as the soundtrack to his soul’s journey into the ether.

08 The Day – It’s remarkable how accurately this song mirrors the energy of “Now Or Never” yet so gently pushes the mood over into optimism. With “How I Got Over” being the turning point that it is, “The Day” may be better characterized as “The Day After”. The song feels like the calm, clear-headed hours after a good cry. It’s relaxed, aware and forward-thinking.

Rapper-wise, this is like Christmas in July—that is if I celebrated Christmas. My dream guest cut on one of my albums would feature none other than Blu and Phonte. Having them on the same song together with Black Thought is close enough. If you’re a head, I don’t think much more needs to be said.

Lastly, I like the nifty way ?uesto and company employ the skip device at the end to lead into the next song.

09 Right On – I have Joanna Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed Mender, and frankly, I can’t listen to it. Not my cup of tea, I guess. That makes this track doubly remarkable for its use of the “The Book of Right-On” sample. Newsom’s voice sounds right at home embedded among the additional layers of instrumentation and popping drums. It’s a great beat and the sample makes for a great hook. Thought and STS come with verses that are more mission statements than anything else. I should say that STS’ delivery and inflection doesn’t do it for me here. The lyrics and flow are about perfect in theory, but the execution is lacking. I do appreciate, however, that STS’ verse sounds as if it was patterned after another classic guest spot: AZ’s show-stealing turn on Nas’ “Life’s A Bitch”.

STS’ appearance is the last cameo in what I consider to be How I Got Over’s main narrative. Having soaked the album in, I feel it would have been better served to give STS’ and P.O.R.N.’s verses to Black Thought for two reasons: 1) I think it’s safe to say that Thought’s performance would have dwarfed the others’; and 2) this album would have been his, firmly. As it stands, there isn’t enough Black Thought to say that he is far and away the true star of the show. He emerges more as an ensemble lead.

10 Doin’ It Again – This song leaked a couple of weeks ago, and I hadn’t really liked how it started until hearing the album in full with the transition from “Right On”. As something of a music nerd, I like getting little peeks behind the production curtain, and I especially like getting some open drums from the tape, so ?uesto giving us the roll, a few kicks and a couple snares is like Christmas in July—that is if I celebrated Christmas.

Another thing I didn’t like about this song when I first heard it was that it wasn’t The Roots’ song, per se. ?uestlove gave an interview not so long ago about what effect being Fallon’s house band was having on the abilities of the band. He specifically noted that the new gig was helping their songwriting. So of course, I expected this new album to be mostly original material with a little bit of sampling or covering sprinkled in. Then “Dear God 2.0” leaked, and I was like, “Okay, that’s just one song. As long as it’s just that one song.” Then this song leaks, and now I’m like, “What happened to the songwriting, ?uest?!” I gotta say I was pretty disappointed.

I suppose I’m over that now.

The song really works as part of the whole. It’s a momentum builder toward the album’s resolution, and Thought really shines with the first sort of quintessential-Black-Thought verses Roots fans are accustomed to hearing. I especially love the endpiece to the last verse: “I guess it’s just Philly shinin’/Rock Rolla, bi-polar like Phyllis Hyman.” Nasty. Some may recall that the second verse is the one Thought spit on the BET Awards cipher. I don’t have a problem with that.

I think this song is quite comparable to “Quills”, off the Phrenology LP.

11 The Fire – One can go two ways with this song. One is to think that it’s phoned in musically and lyrically, far too plodding musically and generic and clichéd lyrically. But I take it the other way.

Repeated listening brings out things in a work that aren’t immediately apparent upon first listen. I’ve picked up on motifs in the rhythms and chord progressions of other tracks on the album that I now believe are based on the rhythm and progressions of “The Fire”. Outright and intriguingly, “A Peace of Light” is the most applicable. Try singing the hook of “The Fire” in the parts of “A Peace of Light” that are in 4. It works. Even the color, which is grounded in seriousness, applies. The same doesn’t go for “Tunnel Vision”, which turns the progression on its ear by transposing to the parallel major while still maintaining the reference to the main theme of “The Fire”.

Now think back to the entire modulation of the first side. “A Peace of Light” evolves into “Walk Alone”, which in turn evolves into “Dear God 2.0”, and so on. By listening to the entire album in the context of the strong musical connections of “A Peace of Light” and this song, one can see a thread that finds its apotheosis in “The Fire”.

Lyrically, it makes sense as well, as this is the moral of the story, ably distilled into one word: try.

So while one can listen to the song and think it rather simple—maybe too simple for an act like The Roots—I hear the album boiled down to its essence.

12 Tunnel Vision – The album cover sports a group of seeming wanderers making their way towards a light. If How I Got Over is the struggle towards the end of life’s dark tunnel, then this track is the leisurely stroll into the light of day. It almost sounds whimsical, as if all that’s missing is a little bit of whistling. As aforementioned, this track takes the themes of “The Fire” and spins it, eases it of its tension. It’s a nice, little happy ending. In my opinion, the story really stops here. Whatever follows is strictly epilogue.

13 Web 20/20 - ?uestlove always (ALWAYS.) moves from track to track according to meter. So if one counts the beats of the bars at the end of a song, one should count right into the beginning of the next. He even abided by this practice on the Home Grown!... release. So I’m simply baffled by the transition from “Tunnel Vision” into this track because unless there’s some internal meter that I’m not catching, ?uesto has broken his rule. Shrug.

All that aside, I do think this is a fantastic way to end the album. It reminds me a bit of “Twice Inna Lifetime”, the closer of the Blackstar album, where it’s just emcees going off on a hard beat. And boy, is this beat hard. This is the only track engineered by ?uestlove. It sounds less live, more programmed. The kick is unnaturally punchy. IT. IS. BANGIN’. I love this track so much. Not a whole lot to say about it except it’s dope rhymes over dope beat. Peedi Peedi needs to join The Roots full-time.

14 Hustla (Bonus) – The only redeeming qualities about this song are Black Thought’s verse and the fact that they sampled the YouTube sensation "Best Cry Ever (Auto-Tuned)". But even that fact isn’t enough for me to keep it on my iPhone. It’s coming off as soon as I get the chance.

Frankly, between the transition from “Tunnel Vision” to “Web 20/20” and this song, the end left a bad taste in my mouth. Oh well. The album is still great.

A Review of The Roots’ How I Got Over, Part One

01 A Peace Of Light – Nice intro. I like Dirty Projectors, so coming in, I felt like whatever the ladies/?uest cooked up would be good. The ladies’ voices sound like instruments, so there’s always a heightening of how interesting the music sounds. Nice change from 4 to 3, then back into four with the drums coming in. And a great transition into “Walk Alone”; every transition on the album is great, save for the last one, which was baffling, but I’ll get to that later.

02 Walk Alone – Having heard “Dear God 2.0” already, I thought this sounded similar. In fact, everything right up to “How I Got Over” possesses pretty much the same color. But the subtle differences in subject matter and actually instrument lines are enough to make each song distinctive. After listening to the album enough, the narrative begins to come to the fore, and this track establishes the beginning, in which we join at crew of people isolated from the world, somewhat detached from a purposeful life and unable to shake the bleakness of the future.

I think it’s worth noting that we don’t hear frontman Black Thought’s voice without hearing five other voices before it. I always find it interesting when a group decides to delay the entrance of the frontman. On one hand, it diminishes the singularity of the group’s true mouthpiece. On the other hand, it builds anticipation; we as listeners are allowed a little warm-up time before we hear the band at full capacity. Two albums that exemplify this are Stevie’s Talking Book and Foreign Exchange’s Connected.

With rap songs, opinions differ on who should get the third verse of a three-verse song. Some consider it the anchor, others the weak spot. Black Thought pretty much always knocks it out of the park, so for this song, I’ve decided he’s assumed the role of anchor.

03 Dear God 2.0 – I still haven’t heard the MoF original, but I suppose the chorus is sufficient to get an understanding of its concept. It sounds good, albeit mellow, and the catchiest thing about it is what is sung by Yim Yames. Black Thought’s insight-to-list ratio is relatively low here, unfortunately. The line “If everything is made in China, are we Chinese?” doesn’t sit well from a quality standpoint. The best line may be “Why is the world so ugly when you made it in Your image,” as it really cuts to the crux of the matter. And because Thought doesn’t delve further into the difficulty of maintaining faith in the face of the ubiquity of, for lack of a better word, evil, I can’t help but feel like more could’ve been accomplished with this track.

04 Radio Daze – This song hit me hard, right away. I love, love, LOVE the hook. I think it’s ?uest and the band, which is one reason why I like it. I’ve always liked the thought of a band being able to do the background vocals on their stuff, and I love the imperfections that come with that. The slightly off-key answers of “Never, never leave you alone, never, never leave you alone” absolutely floor me. I know that might sound strange. The verses are strong, and I’m a big Blu fan, so it was a treat to hear him on a Roots track. Narrative-wise, this may be the most existential track: very ambivalent, very uncertain. Classic. One of their best, ever.

05 Now Or Never – As the title suggests, this song represents the moment of truth—the moment at which one decides to dig one’s heels and push back against the forces that are meant to break one’s self. The beat is so butter, so wet. I’m a big Phonte fan the same way I’m a big Blu fan, so likewise, it’s a treat to hear Phonte on a Roots track. Maybe even more welcome to my ears is Dice Raw, who provides his only rap verse on the album. I’ve always thought Dice a beast, so because he spends so much of his time on the album singing, it makes it doubly precious to hear him spitting. Every verse is legit. The only element of the song I find less-than-stellar is the hook, also provided by Dice Raw. It simply doesn’t work for me.

Also at this point I began to think, “What happened to the spit hooks?” I think this would’ve been the perfect place to bypass the singing and go really pure with it. It’s a shame the hook is what it is as everything else about the song is so damned good—even the end, which skips the beat to match the tempo of the next track. Beautiful touch.

06 How I Got Over – I laugh to myself now because this song is over a year old. I think the video is about as old. If I ruled the world and everything it, I’d make LA Reid resend the video and the song to TV and radio.

The studio version actually dropped after The Roots’ rendition of the song on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. They’re two different animals, the live version being much more energetic. I prefer the studio version, however, because it fits the album so well. In a lot of ways, this is its climax, its self-realization. (That only makes sense, right? It is the title track, after all.) It also marks the break in the mood from sullen and contemplative to more optimistic and determined. The lyrics are pitch-perfect to the sentiment, an observation of the merciless environment found in too many neighborhoods worldwide.

Thought sings, raps and sings again, rather serviceably. Dice provides the hook once again. I love the hook. I find myself singing the upper line every…single…time.


And that’s the end of Side 1.

Drawing of the Week, 06/03/2010