Reacting to "Things Fall Apart" by The Roots
Added 2023-02-03 23:15:09 +0000 UTCDirect Play Link: https://iframe.mediadelivery.net/play/27377/36184b91-67a9-4310-9aaa-8b49f1a87808
Video is still processing, so you may see some resolution drop if you're watching immediately. I'll be offline most of this weekend, but I'll try to get caught up on messages Sunday afternoon/evening. Have a great weekend!
Comments
Tha Carter. ^_^
Dylan Woods
2023-02-10 23:28:51 +0000 UTCBob please more Earl! His next album is brisk, dark, grimy, and addictive, with bars sharper and more mature than in his early works. I think it's gonna be one of your favorites.
adiiiiiiiii
2023-02-08 04:50:34 +0000 UTCThanks Tim :)
Bob_the_Poppop
2023-02-07 03:05:28 +0000 UTCI need to, for sure. There are still a lot of artists I haven't even heard yet, which is pretty wild when you think about it
Bob_the_Poppop
2023-02-07 03:02:41 +0000 UTCI really do need to watch that
Bob_the_Poppop
2023-02-07 03:01:38 +0000 UTCI feel like this album is the musical version of a video game remaster of an old classic (and remastered well)
Bob_the_Poppop
2023-02-07 03:00:35 +0000 UTCxxxtentacion has been on the list for awhile, been meaning to do some of his projects for Monday content, but I've been slammed lately
Bob_the_Poppop
2023-02-07 02:58:42 +0000 UTCYeah, I wanna hear that track now
Bob_the_Poppop
2023-02-07 02:57:55 +0000 UTCI'd love to spend time with all the albums you've listed here. I think VooDoo may be coming soon
Bob_the_Poppop
2023-02-07 02:57:37 +0000 UTCbob are you ever going to do asap rocky? He is a cornerstone of why rap is the way it is today and you have gone 2 years without hearing a single song by him. His album "At Long Last. ASAP" is extremely good and has multiple themes you would enjoy dissecting on it.
Mason
2023-02-06 17:33:49 +0000 UTCDave Matthews feat Derek Trucks, Lie in our Graves is the best thing I've heard in a while, since you mentioned it.
FuzzyDunlop
2023-02-06 04:27:46 +0000 UTCTo respond to your opening rant/thoughts.. WATCH THE WIRE
FuzzyDunlop
2023-02-06 03:58:57 +0000 UTChttps://youtu.be/_TuspAezYBI
Tim Marlowe
2023-02-05 23:57:56 +0000 UTCHere's the live version of You Got Me feat Jilly from Philly:
Tim Marlowe
2023-02-05 23:57:53 +0000 UTChttps://youtu.be/MJCHeEQV454
Tim Marlowe
2023-02-05 23:55:01 +0000 UTChttps://youtu.be/qm7Xt2Qsjcg
Tim Marlowe
2023-02-05 23:54:14 +0000 UTCMust watch their videos of the singles:
Tim Marlowe
2023-02-05 23:54:09 +0000 UTCIt's important that this group in 99 was trying to compete with what people decided was the new hip hop, it turned over a page where people became more abstract. You are going to be happy when you here "How I Got Over" and even "Game Theory" --- that's all messaging instead of just influential music at a certain time
Anthony Almandeto
2023-02-05 15:12:40 +0000 UTCYou'll have to be patient with Black Thought as an MC...on all of these early Roots albums, he always has at least one or two DOPE storytelling tracks, which are always worth the wait.
Will H
2023-02-04 05:28:55 +0000 UTCBob, the thing that you have to put into perspective is that The Roots are not only a band, they're also a collective of battle rap MCs...Black Thought, Malik B., the "extended family" of Dice Raw and Rehani Sayeed (and even the guests Mos Def and Beanie Sigel) were all essentially competing with each other to come up with the best battle rhymes. A big component of battle rapping is dissing your opponent and explaining why you're a dope MC lol, and this album came out at a time when hip-hop was becoming highly commercialized with watered-down lyrics and beats, and a lot of MCs started wearing shiny suits, colorful attire (such as Coogi sweaters), etc...which is why "soft" MCs are referenced throughout the album. "You Got Me" was huge because it had a phenomenal music video (which you should check out), had tons of radio play, and won a Grammy...it was the song that broke The Roots into the mainstream (ironically, as they had more of an underground aesthetic).
Will H
2023-02-04 05:10:18 +0000 UTCDo You Want More??!!! Is just so freakin' cool. It's like sitting in a smoke filled lounge with the coolest band ever.
Tim Marlowe
2023-02-04 04:31:39 +0000 UTCThis was The Roots' attempt at making a throwback album that still sounded modern - remember that MC stands for master of ceremonies and was taken from the name for the guy that would come out to speak between acts at night clubs etc. The original MC was just a guy with a microphone rhyming to keep the party going while the star of the show (the DJ) rocked the music and had the crowd moving. Little by little those MCs started to add more and more of their own thoughts into the simple rhymes and little by little it went from being a side show for the DJ to being the star of the show himself, everyone hung on the MCs every last word. That's why Black Thought isn't really in a very deep or thought-provoking pocket here, he's not trying to be (and trust me, when he is you'll know). He's taking it back to early MCs and keeping it simple. Gangsta rap had all but died down by this point too, so it wasn't really what they were rallying against. It was moreso the commercial nature of it - Puff Daddy dropped his enormous album in 96 and it seemed like everything changed. Gone were the rough, raw looks and sounds of a Wu Tang or a Mobb Deep and here we're shiny suits and high budget videos and a lack of soul or purpose while major awards shows were giving these jokes of rappers all the attention, while deep thoughts and conscious rap were struggling to sell. Thank goodness it was only 4 years from Things Fall Apart until we got College Dropout and everything changed for the better again.
Xavvi
2023-02-04 04:30:55 +0000 UTCProduction is top notch and super clean the Roots are a hip hop band which is why their sound is so clean and drums and melodies impeccable 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Livin Legin
2023-02-04 04:10:51 +0000 UTC100% not about gangsta rap but 100% about jiggy commercial rap 💯
Livin Legin
2023-02-04 03:24:14 +0000 UTCDope beats and Dope Rhymes=Hip Hop and the true Roots of hip hop every hip hop song doesn’t have to be deep or tell a story they are simply bringing it back to the roots of hip hop with this album 💯
Livin Legin
2023-02-04 03:18:48 +0000 UTCThe Roots are simply Hip Hop purists. They don’t hate “gangsta rap” they just hate that the ills of the black community have been commercialized by the record companies. Please listen to Common - I Used To Love H.E.R. It’s the anthem for Hip Hop purists.
Brandon Williams
2023-02-04 03:16:16 +0000 UTCAnd it had an amazing video.
Brandon Williams
2023-02-04 03:13:14 +0000 UTCIt wasn't necessarily gangsta rap that The Roots were rebelling against, it was the commercialism of hiphop. They were against the materialism, fake player image, and dumbing down of the artform. They made a whole video dissing Biggie in 1996 for a song called What They Do. It was the portrayed image and facade that The Roots disliked about Biggie and Bad Boy. Black Thought has made a lot of songs with gangsta rappers, like Beanie Sigel, Styles P, Big Pun, Freddie Gibbs, Benny The Butcher etc. Beanie Sigel, whose content you were surprised by on Adrenaline Rush, was in a duo with Black Thought before The Roots. He was one of the first MC's signed to Jay-Z, and released some great albums. He also gave Kanye the name, Yeezy. He's retired because he unfortunately lost a lung from a gunshot wound after tying to break up a fight. I think you will LOVE The Roots first two albums, Do You Want More? and Illadelph Halflife. They both use even more Jazz and heavier instrumentation. And, you should definitely add Common's Resurrection album to your list.
Jae
2023-02-04 02:36:52 +0000 UTCwould love to see u react to some xxxtentacion and maybe get into that side of rap/hip hop definitely one of the most versatile artists to come out of the last decade (love the reactions btw 🔥)
Johnny
2023-02-04 02:11:34 +0000 UTCYou Got Me didn't blow up because of social media, it blew up because it won a Grammy lol
snooza
2023-02-04 01:40:09 +0000 UTCI don't think this album caused a lot of beef; however feelings were caught from their previous album (Illadelph Halflife) because they had a music video that was a parody of rap chiches of the time. Hope u listen to that album (it's my fave) but mostly so you can watch that music video lol. If you're looking for stories, then their later albums are for you. They have a concept album named Undun which is phenomenal. Rising Down is a great album too with a heavier dark sound.
snooza
2023-02-04 00:46:32 +0000 UTCRest In Power Malik B. 🙏🏻
McSwagburgerXL
2023-02-04 00:30:17 +0000 UTCSpot with your mention of The Roots & Black Star being on the same wavelength. They were part of a larger collective called the Soulquarians (The Roots, Erykah Badu, J Dilla, Mos Def, Talib, D'Angelo, Common, Q-Tip, etc.) You gotta hear Common - Resurrection; I used to love H.E.R. is so good
snooza
2023-02-04 00:07:32 +0000 UTCsome very important music history behind this album: Some time after ATCQ and the Native Tongues split up, Q-Tip and J Dilla (who ended up producing for tribe during their last two 90s albums), started hanging out with Questlove from the Roots, D'Angelo (Arguably the most influential male neo soul artist ever), Erykah Badu and many others. This group became known as the Soulquarians, a collective of musicians who made some of the greatest soul and hip-hop records of all time. They recorded multiple records in the same sessions in this time, INCLUDING - Things Fall Apart, Mos Def's Black on Both Sides, D'Angelo's Voodoo (one of the best of all time i would love for you to react to it), Erykah Badu's Mama's Gun (this one too lol), and a few others. When you listen to these albums its fun to keep in mind that they're all working on each others projects, for example - D'Angelo plays keys sometimes throughout Things Fall Apart. Highly recommend reading into them and looking at what they made together, every album is worth listening to.
chris
2023-02-03 23:41:36 +0000 UTCHell yea, uploaded right before goin to work. Still need an isaiah Rashad reaction tho
Isiah Moore
2023-02-03 23:35:13 +0000 UTCYou underestimate the amount of people that watch these whole videos I'm sure......if we didnt have interest in the whole video what would be the point of subscribingto the Patreon hahahaha. For me personally it depends on the album. If it's an album I really care about I do the whole video.....sometimes I even go back and watch old ones over. Especially for the great albums or ones u really enjoyed....Some albums I skip to certain songs and some albums I skip all together. But your price point is so value that I don't mind supporting you even when an entire months set list isn't my jam personally.
John
2023-02-03 23:29:09 +0000 UTC
