Hip hop may be an art form, but from street corners to the pop charts, rap practitioners often treat it as a competition. As in any game, there are rules, and while it's possible to upend them -- Eminem pulling a reverse Jackie Robinson, for instance -- anomalous acts often find themselves shut out of the major leagues.
Over the course of eight albums and a non-stop tour, The Roots have won widespread acclaim, a dedicated fan base and even a Grammy, but hip hop's lone live band has yet to hit one out of the park. In fact, their misnomered last album, The Tipping Point, topped out at 400,000, their worst showing since their 1993 independent debut.
When bandleader/drummer Ahmir (?uestlove) Thompson and rapper Tariq (Black Thought) Trotter formed The Roots at Philadelphia's High School for the Performing Arts almost two decades ago, their live instrumentation provided a boost by setting them apart. However, mainstream hip hop's orthodoxy has made the difference between anomaly and albatross increasingly negligible.
But they haven't been cowed into conformity. Instead, their dark and moody LP Game Theory is their most musical and political yet, despite synthesized club bangers being bigger than ever.
"That dilemma was heavy on my mind, especially with the current state of hip hop. I see it like a tsunami and we just held onto the tree long enough to breathe air," says Thompson, slouched on a chair in a downtown Toronto hotel room, a light blue Prince concert shirt hugging his healthy frame and a pick comb sticking out of his trademark afro. A well-worn Sudoku book sits on the coffee table.
"Now we got to make sense of this all. What are we gonna do? Hip hop is so quick to forget. If there's a slight indication of a misstep, chances are you'll be counted out."
Their last misstep was Don't Say Nuthin', the first single off The Tipping Point. When long-time label MCA was absorbed into the larger Interscope, their new boss demanded a commercial hit, so they enlisted producer and original Roots keyboardist Scott Storch. But with Storch better known for working with Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake and 50 Cent, it was seen by fans as a sellout and failed to crack radio. The Roots asked to be released from their contract. The label happily obliged.
When they began recording again in the summer of 2005, the band was "pretty much homeless." Though they assumed someone would pick them up, the tense uncertainty bled into the songwriting. Eventually, retired rapper Jay-Z, now president of Def Jam Recordings, signed them, leading to further fan consternation. But despite Jay's commercial rep, he didn't want to be blamed for ruining The Roots.
"He was like 'C'mon, man, give me that artsy-fartsy stuff.' I'm trying to explain that could be troublesome and he says: 'You guys are not radio. Get over that. Now make me an album,' " Thompson recalls.
Though The Roots are seen as a conscious rap group, Trotter is more of a boasting battle rapper than a Chuck D disciple. But the world had become too grim to ignore and Katrina proved the final straw, especially with Trotter's children living in New Orleans and briefly missing in the hurricane's aftermath. It was time for The Roots to say somethin'.
So what took so long? Well, the Clinton era made it easy to ignore politics, and when 9/11 happened, Thompson says the "cultural divide" was the biggest he'd seen since the O.J. verdict. "Whereas white people were panicking, the prime concern for my age range was 'Yo, we gotta get [Jay-Z's album] The Blueprint,' which came out that day," he says. "Someone explained to me, 'Man, this will be the first time America will know what it's like to be other than white. You want to know what a terrorist's life in a Third World country is like, come live in the Bronx projects.' "
So hip hop got down on the dance floor instead of up in arms, "because we know the ugly side of life. It's a denial thing. Screw it, let's celebrate."
Luckily, the tension-filled Game Theory find The Roots feeling less than celebratory.
False Media has Wadud Ahmad interpolating a classic Public Enemy rhyme to launch an indictment of the terror era, with Black Thought rapping from the President's perspective: "We gonna pimp the shit out of nature / send our troops to get my paper / Tell them stay away from them skyscrapers." Livin' in a New World is a boom-bap track about government surveillance and Game Theory brings it home with a fiery report from the still-dangerous streets of Philadelphia.
"The one thing we wanted to avoid was the bandwagon," says Thompson. "I didn't want to be accused of just reading the first four pages of Time magazine. It's Tariq's worldview, but it also deals a lot with his personal struggles."
Curiously, the most personal tracks -- Pity the Child, about the murders of Trotter's parents, and the Katrina-inspired Bread & Butter -- were taken off the album, though they'll emerge on iTunes and mixtapes.
"I didn't want it to look like we were pimping tragedy to sing about," Thompson says, adding Katrina's influence is still felt because Trotter was struggling to find a new home and school for his children during the recording. "It was the reason for the atmosphere and darkness of the album."
Then at least something good came out of it -- Game Theory's anxious funk, unusually taut songwriting and pointed rhymes may not rule radio, but they firmly establish The Roots as one of hip hop's most valuable players.