Got a tip? Send it our way
Share your music news — big or small — with the Austin360.com team by sending us an e-mail.
Home > Austin Music Source > Archives > 2008 > April > 07 > Entry
Review: The Roots at 40 Acres Fest
The Roots play Saturday at 40 Acres Fest on the University of Texas campus. Photo by Bret Gerbe for American-Statesman
South Philadelphia’s the Roots headlined the student-produced 40 Acres Fest in a glorious Saturday evening set at dusk with the illuminated University of Texas tower as their backdrop.
The picturesque setting was appropriate: the University of Texas’ higher education environs surrounded the stage while the Roots’ MC Black Thought dropped science with rhyming verse all over the audience like Einstein dropping theories in a lecture hall. Etched into the stone of the Main Building, the biblical verse “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free” could be viewed ever-so-subtly just above the stage while Black Thought lifted spirits and provoked rapid-fire synapse connections in the brains of the young audience members. Statues of George Washington, Woodrow Wilson and Jefferson Davis surrounded the crowd as an additional reminder that even though it was the weekend, the Roots were about to conduct class.
The free-for-all concert was well attended with a ethnically diverse audience that appeared to number near 1,500, primarily made up of young students who danced with spirited abandon.
The Roots have played in Austin numerous times with myriad lineups. Speculation on whether they could still drop a bangin’ show without so many of their original members was squashed as the band killed on their old-school songs, “Proceed” and “Mellow My Man.” The remixed, and re-envisioned “Mellow My Man” was especially powerful, complete with “math rock” time signature changes and hardcore jazz breaks lively enough to make Ornette Coleman smile.
The Roots are one out of a handful of hip-hops groups that use live instrumentation during their concerts (instead of a DJ cutting up records on two turntables). The live band — vocalist Tariq “Black Thought” Trotter, drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, keyboardist Kamal Gray, percussionist F. Knuckles, guitarist Kirk Douglas, bassist Owen Biddle and sousaphone-shredder Damon “Tuba Gooding Jr.” Bryson — allow for Roots concerts to possess an organic feel (their debut album was titled “Organix”) while the band uses improvised spontaneity to its advantage.
Black Thought spit more verse and rhymes than a lead actor in a Shakespearean drama; his ability to recite his own voluminous lines, as well as the rhymes of guest vocalists and departed members, was astonishing.
After the initial set closed, ?uestlove, Douglas and Bryson remained on stage as a trio named Go Get A Late Pass. The band vamped on Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” dedicating it to President George Bush as students booed and jeered so loudly that ?uestlove had to ask them for silence so he could finish his introduction of the song.
Although every member of the Roots took a solo during the set, founding members Black Thought and ?uestlove radiated brightest as the undeniable stars of the group. ?uestlove’s snare drum tone alone was worthy of multiple graduate school dissertations while Black Thought has developed into not just a pre-eminent positive consciousness rapper, but also a political protest rhyme-slayer worthy of holding it down in a street corner battle with Public Enemy’s Chuck D.
“Get Busy” from the group’s upcoming album “Rising Down” pulsed with a menacing fuzzed-out bass line and syncopated drums that were tighter than a metronome. Meanwhile “75 Bars” — another new track off “Rising Down” — worked a double-time vocal line with head-spinning effect.
Judging from the solid tightness of the tracks from the new record (which drops April 29), ?uestlove’s desire to be the first hip-hop group to release a great 10th record might just come to fruition.
Comments
Click here to report comment abuse.