After the sprawling experimentation of 2002’s Phrenology, The Roots return with an album that marks…well, a return to the roots. Where Phrenology stretched the outer reaches of hip hop culture, throwing everything from rock to techno into the mixer, The Tipping Point is all about tight flows over pared down grooves, picking up on the soul revival that has been slowly infiltrating the hip hop scene (thanks in no small part to a certain Mr Kanye West). The Roots are of course known as a live outfit - ?uestlove on drums, Hub on bass and Kamal on Keys. The groups rapper Black Thought is widely regarded as one of the finest freestyle MCs there is and on these tracks he spits styles galore – on Boom!, a salute to the old skool, he comes off like Big Daddy Kane and Web places the emphasis even more firmly on BT’s scattergun lyricism (this time sounding like Kane’s label mate Kool G Rap). On previous releases, notably Things Fall Apart and Phrenology, the live format has taken them across all kinds of boundaries, yet with The Tipping Point the Philadelphia outfit have come up with a concise collection of downright populist grooves. Tracks like I don’t care, Stay Cool and Somebody’s Gotta Do It are sublimely soulful and funky while the conscious lyricism comes through on Guns Are Drawn, Why (What’s Going On) and the opener, a re-working of Sly and The Family Stone’s Everybody Is A Star.
Heavy. Except for the censorship yo – to the label execs that delete the ‘expletives’ your game is mad weak m*&%!$^£!kers. What’s wrong with a Parental Advisory sticker?? JD