12 posts tagged “the roots”
After a particularly shitty week, I was greeted with this news while meandering through my daily blog roll:
New Album. April 29. The Roots.
AND... Black Thought RIPS it in their first track. RIPS. IT.
Late pass on this, but we were all wondering where Hub was on bass when we saw The Roots at the Hip Hop Honors Tour a few weeks back. Turns out he decided to leave The Roots.
TALK ABOUT SADNESS.
From ?uestlove's post on Okayplayer:
Good luck, Hub, you will definitely be missed.Let me end all speculation ladies and gentlemen and officially announce that yes indeed Hub played his last show as a member of The Roots on August 31st of this year.
One has to understand off the bat to be a member of this group is to sacrifice your life. If you look at it (and this is applies to most of the artists that you talk about on this site) there is nothing "normal" about our lives...
This isn't a pity party. Nor an explanation. Just a confirmation. I understand that most of you are a little miffed that you weren't given the option to say "goodbye". Truth is Hub really didn't want to make a big deal about this. Which is probably why we defied him anyway and had a "moment" onstage which got quite emotional after his last solo. We got about 16 bottles of bubbly and tried to have a 2 fish/5 loafs of bread distribution to the crowd so that we could properly send him off.
So what of The Roots now? We've had the workload of about 7 groups and have been on the road since most of you were in high school (or even worse listening to your older siblings cassettes of our first couple of albums) and sometimes opportunity knocks. (in this case it's in the form of film/tv scoring)....the show will go on (i have yet to go to those "what are we gonna do now?!?!" posts on the boards.) it went on after Rahzel, Scratch, and Ben. and it will go on.
That area is right above a major freeway overpass, so I like to think that late one night a young couple was driving over on their way home from a bar with the windows rolled down. The woman, possibly drunk off her ass, can't contain how much fun she just had and literally kicks up her feet in excitement. (This story works better in my head if they're driving a convertible and the woman is also trying to get at her boyfriend while he's trying to drive... but we'll just leave that part out.) Of course, her too-big Candies heel decides it can't take the abuse anymore after a long night of off-beat dancing and getting alcohol spilled on it, so it decides to liberate itself from her right foot and bounce it's way over the overpass.
That Monday morning, a construction worker spies the shoe and, aware that picking it up and taking it home would signal "Very Weird Shoe Fetish" to his coworkers, hooks the heel onto the fence so that it could greet him every morning before heading off into the trenches.
Thursday night I was at The Fillmore for the VH1 Hip Hop Honors Tour starring Big Daddy Kane, MC Lyte and The Roots. The Roots backed Kane and Lyte during their performance and started off the show with Skills and Black Thought doing covers of classic Hip Hop tracks, everything from N.W.A.'s "Gangster Gangster" to Eric B. & Rakim's "Microphone Fiend." The entire night was amazing. MC Lyte looked like she just stepped out of one of her videos, Kane worked the crowd well and Thought sang some Luther Vandross! I love The Roots.
In my previous post I mentioned how my friends and I got a prime position for The Roots set during Coachella. As luck would have it, someone thought we were amusing enough that he took a picture of us when The Roots were covering "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" and posted it to the Coachella fan gallery.
So that would be Lan on the left and me on the right throwing up the Wu-Tang symbol and the next picture is where we were in relation to the rest of the crowd and stage. All pictures courtesy of itzdank!
Let's see how far I can get before the urge to pass out takes over me and I fall face-first onto this keyboard.
Friday: Silversun Pickups, Amy Winehouse, Arctic Monkeys, Peaches, Julieta Venegas, Peeping Tom, El-P, Gogol Bordello
Saturday: (after spending over an hour huddled in the shade of a giant leaf-tent because it was 107˚) !!! (AKA: chk chk chk), Ghostface Killah, Girl Talk, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Mike Relm, The Good, the Bad and The Queen, Tiesto
Sunday: Mika, Lupe Fiasco, The Coup, Explosions in the Sky, The Roots, Klaxons, Lily Allen, Manu Chao, Rage Against The Machine
Total Amount of Hours at Coachella: 28
Total Performances Viewed: 24
Total Travel Time: ~19 hours
Gogol Bordello: One of the craziest shows I've been to, hands down. Funniest thing from the crowd? The fact that everyone started singing with a fake accent when they started playing. HI-LAIR. But, seriously, though how can you not love a band that has a guy that could be your grandpa on an electric violin or what looks like a soccer dad on the accordian? I LOVE these guys!
Girl Talk: Since he's basically a guy on a laptop (He had the words "I AM NOT A DJ" projected on to a screen behind him.), he always gets people on stage to dance around to get the crowd hype. Honestly, I don't know what the rest of the crowd was doing or really cared since I was too damn busy dancing my ass off and scaring all the kids with my vast knowledge of mainstream Hip Hop lyrics. This is why I'm hot!
The Roots: My friends and I were able to stand on one of the sets of barriers that was placed mid-field, so we had a perfect view over half the crowd to the stage. Since The Roots tour extensively and had been in California less than three months prior, they stuck to the crowd favorites like Hip Hop 101 (This is why I'm hot!), The Seed (2.0), Love of My Life, etc. ?uestlove, Kirk Douglas, and Tuba Gooding Jr. also did their Bob Dylan cover and Black Thought had his James Brown moment. Since my friends and I were in plain view of half the crowd I figure we either annoyed or amused the shit out of thousands of people with our antics during the set. Hey, it's not my fault these people don't know how to "Snap Yo Fingers." The amount of people that were there to see them perform was pretty amazing.
Rage Against The Machine: I was way in the back for this one because I had just come from seeing Lily Allen and I didn't want to experience the force of thousands of people that were going to go buckwild nearer to the stage. I think the people that were in the very front were literally camped out all day in the desert heat just waiting through all the acts till Rage came on. Talk about hardcore.
The set-list:
Testify, Bulls on Parade, People of the Sun, Bombtrack, Bullet in the Head, Know Your Enemy, Down Rodeo, Guerilla Radio, Renegades of Funk, Calm Like a Bomb, Sleep Now in the Fire, Wake Up, Freedom, Killing in the Name
The energy for this show was amazing. Usually when you're way in the back everyone's kind of chill, but there were people throwing their heads around and screaming out lyrics from where I was. It probably helped that there were probably over 60,000 people there, of course. The entire 90 minutes were just... WOW. As in, I'm still kind of in a daze over it all, WOW. Also as in, "Holy shit, I'm hella excited I'm going to see them again at Rock The Bells in August." WOW. Honestly, I can't even tell you how ridiculously dope seeing them live was. I was never an RATM fan when they were together before (too busy listening to Hip Hop, yo), so seeing them live has turned me into a bigger fan than I ever was before.
Anyway, I'm hella tired and I have to go to work tomorrow. I have much more to say, but I'll save it for another post. I'll end with this though: I LOVE COACHELLA (even if it's in the middle of a god-forsaken desert holyshitwasithot)!
Man, my feet hurt. Today's performances included Lupe Fiasco (wearing a Hysteric Glamour shirt. I'm a dork.), The Coup (5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O.), The Roots (I love them. I really do.) and I'm taking a break before going to see Lily Allen and then... and then... and then...
Rage Against the Machine!
There are something close to 5 billion people here (okay, more like 160,000ish) and it's going to be bananas when Rage comes on tonight. Why did I just buy a $50 Coachella sweatshirt that's zipper pull looks like a guitar pick? Oh, I'm a sucker, that's why.
CSS is playing on some flat-panel TVs in this tent, I kinda wish I had gone to see them.
Yesterday, Girl Talk played "Tell Me When To Go." Can I tell you that me and Lan literally scared some girls around us when we started gettin' stupid. Bay Area represent! Yee!
Anyway, heading home tomorrow. My shoes and arms are all kind of browner, I'm much broker and I feel like I could possibly sleep for a week straight.
But, fuck man, I love Coachella.
Those that are in the know are already aware that at almost every Roots show they do what's called "Hip Hop 101," where they'll briefly cover current and past Hip Hop and R&B hits.
I've had the pleasure of hearing Black Thought crack the hell up while trying to do Common's "Come Close," ?uestlove doing a really good Michael Jackson, "Mama se mama sa mama kusa..." and have seen Kamal attempt the Beyoncé booty bump from "Crazy in Love."
During Thursday night's Hip Hop 101, a familiar beat kicked in and I saw Black Thought break out into this huge, but kind of embarassed, grin. I started yelling right when I recognized it but it took a second or two for my friends behind me to realize what it was. When my one friend (a Roots virgin at the time) finally got it, she screamed her giant fangirl head off.
Oh yes, my friends, The Roots brought the SexyBack.
I love The Roots. LOVE. THEM.
Anyway, at the end of one of his entries while in Europe, ?uest has a spaz moment over someone named "A.W." where he meets her in what looks like a studio. At the end of the entry, a song kicks in that's totally reminiscent of the 50s and 60s girl groups that my Dad grew me up on. The video fades out long before the song does, and I "watched" the rest of the vid just to hear the rest of the song and figure out who this "A.W." was.
So here's the song that ?uest dropped at the end of his video diary. I haven't stuck a song on repeat in ages, but I almost don't want to sleep yet because I want to keep listening to this song. I am JUICED to see her at Coachella this year.
I'm going to run out during my lunch break to buy her album. Awww yeah.
Because it looks like 2007 will be The Year of the Concert
January 9th (Tuesday): Incubus @ The Warfield
My coworker is a huuuuge Incubus fan and got tickets through a pre-sale, then she won backstage passes off of eBay for the same show. Thanks to her selling her two tickets to me and my other coworker, we can now go to one of their sold out shows.
January 12th (Friday): Justin Timberlake & Pink @ The Arco Arena
Yeah yeah, I'm bringing SexyBack, yadda yadda yadda... Let's get this party started... so on and so forth...
February 8th (Thursday): The Roots @ The Fillmore
I'm buying my girls tickets as Christmas gifts. Yes, they already know. Yes, they better act surprised regardless.
February 25th (Sunday): Dir en grey @ The Fillmore
They're one of those bands that I told myself I'd go check out if they were ever in my area. Granted, the only song I really really like of theirs is "The Final," but now that they've announced an SF date I guess I better go see what all the hub-bub is about.
I don't think I mentioned how excited I am to see The Roots this Friday. EXCITED I AM!
