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Yeah, it bugs the crap out of me that people think The Roots are experimental. Indie kids have a tendency to think that hip-hop begins and ends with them... in my humble opinion, they couldn't be more wrong...

"The Roots do not represent a “saved” hip hop. They represent hip hop hopelessly compromised by rockist values. Perhaps the Roots are the best possible outcome of this scenario – they don’t make horrible music, although much of it is bland and boring. It’s safe: despite a reputation for experimentation, The Roots never push hip hop to its limits. They merely show how hip hop can easily conform to Rolling Stone’s version of valid music. Common’s latest album, Electric Circus does the same: getting all psychedelic in Hendrix’s studio isn’t the future of hip hop, or any other music. I won’t call it selling out, because Common and The Roots sell far fewer albums than 50 Cent (although Common’s making plenty of really real riches for that travesty of a Coke jingle). Nevertheless, this vanilla hip hop is being billed as Chunky Monkey, even though it’s obviously bereft of fudge and nuts. If you like that stuff, fine, just don’t pretend it’s adventurous because you threw a few stale peanuts in there.


The future of hip hop has nothing to do with rock. Rock isn’t the future of music. If anything is, it’s dance music. Hip hop has not been loathe to appropriate dance music’s synthy sound palette, club-based distribution, or designer drugs, and the move has brought the style great success – financially, but also creatively. A competitive singles-based market keeps MCs and producers constantly forging ahead into new sounds and new styles. Punjabi-language MCs burning up American charts? Dancehall a radio staple? This sounds like the future to me, a future I couldn’t have envisioned a few years ago. The only thing that needs saving in this climate is Common’s career."

(from the Stylus article)

It's a good point, and probably does account for one reason why a musician like me would gravitate toward any hip hop act that actually plays it's music on instruments, rather than use a DAT. It's also, by the sound of it, a point made by someone who thinks electronica is more innovative than electric or acoustic bands, or that DIY began with dance music (it was the basis of Punk in the late 70s) If I'm to be honest, then there is fuck all that's really NEW going on in either camps. Can any machine musician really claim that what they're doing wasn't previously done by Kraftwerk/Eno/BBC radiophonic workshop/Prince/Aphex Twin or the weirder techno artists like Richie Hawtin?

All the musical spirits, wines and liquers have pretty much been already invented... all that remains is different peoples cocktail recipes. I like the way BEP have taken the choppy R&B vocal style pretty much pioneered on the first Destinys Child album and integrated it into a hip hop album. It's a cocktail than doesn't taste like any other I know.

I think there is a similar divide in hip hop as there is in guitar music, in the way some people are Beatles while some are Stones... those who want to be seen as great musicians vs those who want to be seen as the biggest rock stars, The Roots vs 50 Cent.

I like this album a lot, some hate this album a lot . Part of the evangelical tone of the article is because I think that many of those who fall into the latter camp haven't HEARD the whole album... just 'Where Is The Love'. It's made as many people in the UK NOT buy the BEP album as 'Hey Ya' made people BUY the Outkast album.