that was Ben Kenny era on guitar tho & he was a converted bassist playing guitar so it was more chord-crunch driven.

Sometimes the technical limitations can be a blessing rather than burden.

The best Roots arrangement of 'Concerto Of The Desperado' was the version they played in the late 90's before they even had a guitarist in the group at all.

They'd take Kamal out from behind his keyboard (with him being the only touring key player) and hand him a guitar for just that song.

He would play a line of two or maybe three notes in a loop repeatedly for the whole joint while holding the guitar out front with a big grin on his face like the Long Island bro down the hall from my Northeastern U dorm room when he borrowed his roommates guitar & learned how to play the opening lick from Candlebox's 'Far Behind'.

Song kinda bubbled quietly until Quest's drums cracked in & then Thought was off with the verse, tagging the Stetsasonic 'It Ain't Nothin Like Hip-Hop Music' mantra on the end of the hook.

Then the Stetsasonic 'It ain't nothin like hip-hop music' call-and-response-with-the-crowd tag at the end of each hook.

Plus that was during that (for lack of a better term) 'garage' semi-revival of the early 2000s so the template was different.

Now half of this Pitchfork stuff classified as rock doesn't actually 'rock' in any sense of the word but we've discussed that many times here before.

Phrenology was actually a jarring leap & one they felt they needed with the fender-rhodes/neo-soul sound that Things Fall Apart helped create fading & some of its biggest artists going MIA.

But yeah, I love that album, with those first four MCA/Geffen albums they're all great for completely different reasons which is a rare feat.