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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.