ELECtRiC PURGAtORY

A documentary on the struggles of the black rock musician and the stigma they face in the black community and the music industry.

tHE ROOtS - undun

undun is “an existential re-telling of the short life of one Redford Stephens (1974-1999).” In some ways the culmination of the play between street legal rap and high art that has always characterized The Roots’ music the record explores “the intersection of free will and prescribed destiny as it plays out on the corner,” beginning with Redford’s death and moving backwards in time to deconstruct all that has led to his (and our own) coming “undun.” Or as The Roots’ drummer and spokesman Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson puts it:

“At this point in our career we’d like for our work to have a unifying theme, and an experiential quality. We’ve been intentionally making our albums shorter in length so that they can be experienced as a continuous work. The music is band-oriented with an eye on the moody cinematic. As a DJ, I am the King of playlists, but I don’t want our albums to feel like a playlist or a mixtape for that matter. We want to tell stories that work within the album format and we want the stories to be nuanced and useful to people. Undun is the story of this kid who becomes criminal, but he wasn’t born criminal. He’s not the nouveau exotic primitive bug-eyed gunrunner like Tupac’s character Bishop in Juice… he’s actually thoughtful and is neither victim nor hero. Just some kid who begins to order his world in a way that makes the most sense to him at a given moment… At the end of the day… isn’t that what we all do?”

At an exclusive listening session at Manhattan’s Legacy Studios for The Roots new LP undun, manager Rich Nichols introduced the record by saying “the story is about the undoing of a kid.” Which reiterates what those of us who’ve been paying attention already knew about the concept album, but much more succinctly. He added that title was partially inspired by The Guess Who song of the same name (sometimes known as “She’s Come Undone”) and that the major underlying theme revolves around the idea of a person’s life choices being determined by their surroundings–in this case, ghetto, USA.

Without further preamble, Nichols had the engineer cue up undun for the eager handful of journalists and label types and ran through the LP its entirety—almost. After nine songs, the music stopped and Rich explained that they were in the studio to record the 10th and final track at this very session. At that point Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and pianist D.D. Jackson launched into four or five very different takes of a tumultuous freeform piano-and-drums requiem as we looked on (or drifted out, depending on our jobs) one of which will presumably be the album’s closer. Now THAT is what you call a listening session. Find below my track-by-track impressions of the rest of the album.

THE ROOTS - undun

“Sleep” – The album opens with a bluesy, spooky piano that could be Portishead or a dusty old jazz 78. Black Thought speaks the first words “To catch a thief…” and then launches into some bars that sketch out the death of the main character Redford Stevens, a disoriented soul looking back over his life, alternated with a soulful, raspy vocal it takes me a second to recognize as Aaron Livingston of Icebird (actually the track is credited to Young Vipers ie Aaron Livingston and Hot Sugar who provided the original music as well). The feel is very cinematic and my first thought is that the narrative structure of this album is there to let The Roots be a lot more experimental with the music, without people losing the thread—same way that Henry Mancini could record himself throwing rubber balls at a harp on a film score, because the viewer is so focused on the action onscreen, they ‘forget’ they’re listening to dissonant sounds.

“Make My” – I don’t have to describe this one because you can listen to it right here, but I will say that the instrumental groove that comes in around 2:44, with its flute and Mizell Brothers-like bass sound is a premonition of the rest of the album, the real heart of which lies not so much in the hooks and verses but in the changes, the bridges and b-sections that carry you over the interstices of the tracks like the movements of a symphony.

“One Time” – Big drums and rappity-rap. “Too much money talkin / we make ‘em economize” and “We make the funny papers like Comic-Con” and “Not a thing I fear except fear itself” (Black Thought). Then “I wonder if you die / do you hear harps and bagpipes / Even if you was born the other side of a crackpipe?” (<– Dice Raw) and then the rappity-rap gives way to a sublime, panoramic string movement, reminiscent of the emotionally-charged breakdown in “Act Too (Love of my Life)” from Things Fall Apart.

“Kool On” – This song is built on a soulful loop of heavily modulated electric guitar and a snatch of soulful “whoah” that I swear has to be a sample. Nichols later confirms offhandedly that it is a D.J. Rogers sample, the first and only a rare sample from The Roots–in the past even beats like “Dynamite”–credited to Dilla–were replayed by the band. Meanwhile someone sings “Stars, I make you shine” and somebody raps “sting like a hornet / damn it feels good to see people up on it.”

“The Jump” – Comes in on an abrupt one-beat transition, followed by big, no, HUGE drums and hard-hitting rappity-rap from Thought: “If not for these hood inventions / I’d be just another kid with no intentions” and “when he’s tired of running / Through the layers of the onion, he’ll shed a tear…” The chorus has the feel of a bluesy 70s rock song that you would hear in the soundtrack of a Martin Scorcese flick when the chips are down: “We all on a journey…but on the other side that’s when we settle up the score.” After the third chorus the pitch wavers uncomfortably on the hi-hat and the drums sloooooww doooown into:

“Stomp” – Blues guitar, hard rock bass pulse and a gangsterish piano vamp–and Black Thought “speaking the pieces of a man / staring at the creases in my hand…never deviating from the plan.” Somebody else (not Dice Raw, but P.O.R.N. turns out) says “Put the barrel in the mouth and blow the devil a kiss.” Track 6 of a 10-track album and undun just hit a whole other level of Oh Shit. In the spaces of the beat a preacher shouts: “Repeat after me: We gon’ fight!”

“Lighthouse” – “Get down with the captain or go down with the ship / Before we go down I’ma hit ‘em with this…” This is the extremely melodic song which you may have heard Questlove leak tiny a studio snippet from, with words that sounded like face down in the ocean. And are, it turns out, “Face down in the ocean”–sung by Dice Raw (!) and alternating with the rapped chorus: “Passin out lifejackets, we about to go di-down.” Even in the midst of the dreamy, if melancholy, melody the band is playing with eerie half-tones and other things you really shouldn’t be able to get way with on a rap record.

“I Remember” – Black Thought leads with: “I drew a 2 of hearts from my deck of cards.” The chorus is “I remember / Can you remember / I do…” and the theme (clearly) is memory and looking back at where you came from: “I realize how depressing of a place it is / and recognizing in the reflection who’s face it is.” Powerful stuff, and the only criticism is that it feels too personal to be Redford Stephens, pretty sure this is Black Thought talking about Black Thought and the line between author and character is blurred.

“Tip The Scale” – “Famous last words: ‘you under arrest’” now we are in the prison scene, dealing not so much with the reality of jail as its inevitability: “I got a bro under arrest, and one in / He wrote me a letter, it said: ‘when you comin?’ / Two ways out: digging tunnels or digging graves out.”

“Redford” – Track 10 of 10. I could tell you about this one, but I would have to tell it four different ways and let you choose your own adventure.

LISTEN TO "UNDUN" IN IT'S ENTIRETY HERE

"And what I did came back to me eventually," narrator Redford Stephens, transcendently portrayed by Black Thought, posthumously intones in "Sleep," the first track from The Roots' 13th album undun. Death pervades undun; it follows Stephens, a poor kid from Philadelphia and victim to the drug trade, from the moment he surrenders himself to the game all the way to his inevitable end. Along the way, no verse is wasted, no optimism is spared; each line is like a shovelful of dirt on Redford's coffin. At 39 minutes, undun feels like a lifetime, because it is one.

The album is gorgeously arranged by the incomparable ?uestlove. The record's most affecting element, however, is its lyricism, led with gimmick-less seriousness by Black Thought, a rapper whose storytelling is unencumbered by sophomoric jocularity or false cartoonishness. His desolation is unvarnished and striking in "I Remember," in which he darkly rhymes, "I drew a two of hearts from a deck of cards / A stock trick from my empty repertoire / Another hopeless story, never read at all / I'm better off looking for the end where the credits are." He's given fleeting respite from the stress of the drug trade in "Kool On," but is harshly pulled back to earth the next morning in "The OtherSide," where paranoia surrounds him again: "We obviously need to tone it down a bit / Running around town spending time like it's counterfeit."

The album's guest spots are similarly purposeful. Producer Just Blaze's recent conquests with Drake and Rick Ross (among many) have made him ubiquitous on pop radio, but in "Stomp" he transforms the four-on-the-floor, tambourine-rattling beat into a plodding chain gang. Longtime Roots collaborator P.O.R.N., whose "Every thought is dark as a glass of Guinness" (in "The OtherSide") sounds like a combination of Curren$y and Malice of Clipse. In "One Time," Dice Raw issues a heartbreakingly dark verse on the predestination of his cursed life, asking, "I wonder when you die, do you hear harps and bagpipes? / If you ball on the other side of the crack pipe? / N——s learn math just to understand the crack price / then dive in headfirst like a jackknife." These features peak in "Tip the Scale," the most lush and affecting rumination of crack sales since Kanye West and Jon Brion's "Crack Music."

The album ends with a short suite of pieces based on Sufjan Stevens' instrumental "Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)" from his album Michigan; it even features the composer on piano. The ghostly backup vocals and muted horns perfectly match undun's spectral artfulness. Brilliantly, instead of transforming "Redford" into a functional sample, it's presented in state. ?uestlove treats "Redford" almost like a piece of movie music, accompanying the action rather than recapitulating it. The result is a cinematic moment waiting to be processed, fictionalized into hip-hop. It's as if the listener zoomed in beyond the safe narrative distance of the song and actually ended up in the movie. This movement of the suite is like a rap track under a microscope, the sample blown up so large that the beats that keep hip-hop as the frame of reference are a horizon enshrouded in fog. By the third act, Stephens has been replaced by DD Jackson in a careening duet with ?uestlove, whose long-cultivated drumming heft and precision play like fists through a plaster wall or bullet holes through a car door. Finally, credits roll over a sublime string quartet, mercifully for Black Thought's black thoughts — at least for a moment, before ?uestlove's meticulously arranged strings are silenced by the chilling, deathly growl of a struck piano.

Black Thought has never been frivolous, but there's extra seriousness to his performance on this record that can only be explained by someone who truly knows him. "Redford is definitely compiled [from] five or six people that we've known from Philadelphia," ?uestlove told Spin magazine recently. "Tariq [a.k.a. Black Thought]'s entire family, his cousin and brothers, have literally all been this guy. Tariq is the only one that has escaped the fate that most of his family have encountered. The narrative definitely hits home with him more than any other member of the band."undun

COMMON and ?UEStLOVE on ART, ARTiSTY, and BLENDiNG iNSPiRAtiONS

Common and ?uestlove discuss what a true artist is.

They dissect and define the artistry of music and blending inspirations from the artists that led the way.

BETTY WRiGHT & tHE ROOTS - BETTY WRiGHT: tHE MOViE

If you love the classic era of baby-making music -- which could mean that you’re just a year or two past the point of having to worry about your music tastes resulting in actual babies – you’ll love “Betty Wright: The Movie,” the new album by the 57-year-old soul singer and her storied backup band, the Roots.

Wright even addresses that particular legacy in a spoken-word introduction to “Tonight Again,” the sexiest of her new songs (and one obviously intended as a sequel to her 1975 single, “Tonight is the Night”).

“OK, grown folks’ music being’ played right now,” she announces. “Put children to bed. This song goes out to all of you that blame every child you ever had on me! I know, because I meet all these little kids named Betty Wright after ‘Tonight is the Night.’”

The Roots are just a little too old to claim their births have any connection to that oldie, although drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson was born the same year that Wright had her first and only top 10 hit, “Clean Up Woman,” in 1971.

Now, he’s co-producing her new album as well as enlisting the Roots in a collaborative enough fashion that they’re co-billed with her on the project.

You’d think the Roots would be busy enough with their Jimmy Fallon gig, where the Philly hip-hop crew prove remarkably chameleonic on a nightly basis.

But Questlove can’t help moonlighting on his moonlighting, so he’s also got a great side career going in soul-music reclamation. Three years ago, he proved just what a sharp time traveler he is when he worked on Al Green’s much-loved comeback, “Lay It Down.”

With Green, Questlove was slavish to a tee to the old signature sound. He’s almost as deferential to the urban styles of the 1970s on “Betty Wright: The Movie.”

But since Wright isn’t quite so identified with a specific sonic signature as Reverend Al, Questlove isn’t afraid to add a few subtle modern touches here and there -- or not-so-subtle ones, if we’re talking about the guest raps by Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg.

Despite the presence of Weezy, this is an album that’s going to be accused, if anything, of being too much in throw to the throwback aspects of wah-wah guitar, proto-disco strings, and other specific touchstones of the era.

If so, Wright and Questlove certainly wouldn’t be convicted by a jury of their “they don’t make ‘em like that anymore” peers.

In fighting off a nostalgia charge, it helps that Wright is returning to the mid-‘70s as if she were a 57-year-old woman in 1974, with themes that reflect whatever wisening she’s been through since then.

In “Real Woman,” where she’s advising men to “stop playing with girls,” it almost sounds like she’s advocating cougar-dom -- except for the parts where it’s explicitly clear that she’s telling her nephews to grow up in their dating-and-mating choices, not jealous of the action younger gals are getting.

The presence of Snoop as a guest star on “Real Woman” might seem counterintuitive, with the lyrics arguing for maturity and Snoop practically a poster child for arrested development.

But the rapper adds some nice touches and doesn’t dominate the track -- as could be said of Lil Wayne’s minimalist contributions to “Grapes on a Vine.” (Favors are being traded, since the oft-sampled Wright appeared on a “Tha Carter III” number of Wayne's a few years back).

A more perfectly suited guest is found in Joss Stone, whose first two albums were co-produced by Wright. She shows up to duet on the disco ballad “Whisper in the Wind,” and it’s a measure of just how successful Wright’s mentoring was that picking their two voices apart isn’t always an instantaneous matter.

In the opening “Old Songs,” Wright tries to bridge the generation gap by admonishing, “I must admit, your beats got fatter/But add subject matter on subjects that matter.”

She makes good on that herself with “Hollywould,” a lament about a single mother who spends her nights in the clubs, and “Go!,” a live track that adds musical rawness to the tender subject matter of domestic abuse.

But for the most part, even with its added layers of age-appropriate consciousness and sass, “Betty Wright: The Movie” is an album that is going to go down very, very well in the boudoirs of classic R&B fans who don’t find current urban music setting quite the right mood.

And if the presence and co-billing of the Roots helps nudge her demographics down a bit, “Betty” could be re-popularized as a baby name after all.

Tracklist:

01 – Old Songs
02 – Real Woman (Feat. Snoop Dogg)
03 – In The Middle Of The Game (Don’t Change The Play)
04 – Surrender
05 – Grapes On A Vine (Feat. Lil Wayne)
06 – Look Around (Be A Man)
07 – Tonight Again
08 – Hollywould (Feat. The Messenger)
09 – Whisper In The Wind (Feat. Joss Stone)
10 – Baby Come Back (Feat. Lenny Williams)
11 – So Long, So Wrong
12 – You & Me, Leroy
13 – The One
14 – Go! (Live)

Betty Wright And The Roots - Betty Wright: THE MUSIC

MTV "When i Was 17" FEATURiNG ?UESTLOVE

ROLLiNGStONE - tHE PLAYLiSt SPECIAL - ?UEStLOVE

Artists Pick Their Personal Top 10s

The Roots drummer converted to the Purple side at age 11 listening to "Lady Cab Driver." "He pulls off a snare battle with himself — you can hear the wood chips hit the floor," ?uestlove says. "It was there that I first felt the passion in his musicianship."

1. "Baby I'm a Star" (Live from Landover, Maryland, Purple Rain tour) - 1984 His "James Brown on The T.A.M.I. Show doing 'Night Train' " moment. He's the best bandleader of his generation — and if I ever need to prove that to someone, this is my surefire crash course.
2. "Movie Star" - 1986 Prince's best display of humor, quirkiness, self-mockery and a dash of funk. This was originally a demo intended for the Time, but I can't see Morris Day waxing poetic about potato chips like this.
3. "Irresistible Bitch" - 1983 "Tricky" - 1984 "Cloreen Bacon Skin" - 1983 A three-way tie between songs that share DNA: funky drums and a bass line in the key of A. No way I could separate 'em.
4. "Little Red Corvette" (12-inch extended version) - 1983 A major face-lift: Prince transforms the song into this sweaty funk-out and — sorry, Diddy! — Prince invented the remix.
5. "Lady Cab Driver" - 1982 "1999" was the kind of album where you couldn't just bite one chip, and this was the mightiest chip.
6. "The Bird" (Rehearsal demo) - 1983 I'm certain Prince would be chagrined by this list of hard-to-find classics (in his eyes: illegal), but practicing and absorbing this song has shaped many a musician's life, including mine — it was all the college I needed. He builds a groove here from the ground up, note by note. This one shows that even the smallest detail is crucial to a song.
7. "The Ballad of Dorothy Parker" - 1987 If Graham Central Station's Release Yourself and Joni Mitchell's Hissing of Summer Lawns fell in love, got married and had a baby.
8. "The Sex of It" (Demo for Kid Creole and the Coconuts) - 1987 Our hero reflects on his dead-end relationship, feeling like a used piece of meat — but don't cue the strings, because we'd all love for women to just want us "for the sex!" This brings his vulnerability to light.
9. "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore" - 1983 A bare-bones song that shows off his gospel side (the piano), his soul side (the falsetto) and his jazz side (the way he phrases his ad-libs toward the song's fade-out). This song has wound up on every mope/breakup mix I ever made.
10. "Erotic City" - 1984 This is one of his most popular B sides. It's his ode to P-Funk, and it makes for the perfect counterbalance to its A side, "Let's Go Crazy." It also marks the beginning of him singing as a helium-voiced female character named Camille.
11. "A Million Miles (I Love You)" - 1984 I could be the minority here, but I truly believe that if she had been given half a chance, Brenda Bennett (Prince's wardrobe mistress in 81, later one third of both Vanity 6 and Apollonia 6 projects) coulda been a contender.
12. "Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)" - 1982 "Water" is the soundtrack in my head everytime a girl does me wrong.
13. "All My Dreams" - 1986 This song always gave me the impression that perhaps Prince was hip to the "You Can't Do That Onstage Anymore"-era Zappa, using this song as an homage. Shame this never made it as an official release.
14. "Power Fantastic" - 1986 My all time favorite ballad of his. The perfect Sunday afternoon driving song. The flute part kills me everytime.
15. "Strawberry Shortcake" - 1984 A hot sweaty purple funk instrumental workout!