The Roots: Kentish Town Forum 6/12/08
The Roots offer one of the most consistently brilliant live experiences of any band at the moment. They play their complex hip hop completely organically, with beats engineered by drummer ?uestlove and virtuosos in guitar, keyboards and bass, plus of course the rapping of Black Thought, an unjustly underestimated rapper. It adds up to a captivating live experiences, especially when you throw in some generous covers of some hip-hop classics such as “Push It” by Salt n’ Pepa. Tonight The Roots put on another party at the Kentish Town Forum, but this time they fell slightly below the usual extremely high standards they set themselves. The biggest surprise of the night, in almost every sense, comes when The Roots appear onstage complete with tuba, with the tuba player jumping around the stage as if he were carrying a kazoo. They began with the sparse Thought @ Work (”you feel this joint this is your new favourite song”), which features some superb rapping from Black Thought before seguing straight into Get Busy from new album The Rising. The audience is keen to show their appreciation butthey don’t get a chance as there is no let up until three songs in. ”How y’all feeling tonight?” asks Black Thought to a lively crowd.
The first five or six songs maintained this momentum, before the performance dipped slightly and attentions wandered. There is a fine line between superb musicianship and noodling, and the times I have seen The Roots before they have always kept just about the right side of musicianship, even during the somewhat indulgent band member introductions and obligatory three minute solos, party because the solos are so very good. Tonight though they slipped over the edge for a number of reasons; I didn’t feel the musicianship was as good with a new bassist replacing the cigar-smoking Leonard Hubbard. Some of their greatest songs - including You Got Me and The Next Movement - were rather thrown away in radical reworkings which didn’t quite satisfy; and paradoxically there almost wasn’t enough musicianship - we got a three-minute drum/bongo duel (The Roots recognise the importance of the battle in hip hop) but the last time they came to the UK and played Shepherd’s Bush Empire, the guitarist played a long solo that literally made me clap my hands and jump for joy.
They finished with a glorious rendition of The Seed which brought things back a bit. This was by no means a bad show, it just lacked a little of the energy of previous Roots shows, and in particular missed the end segment where The Roots turn into a human jukebox as they recreate some hip hop classics to send everyone home with huge smiles on their faces. But another fine Roots show. 7/10
Tags: The roots, the roots kentish town