Listening to it now, 25 years out from its release, it's easier to get a sense of the music outside of the context of the era.

15 has mentioned before that one of the reasons he feels The Roots never got embraced like Tribe and De la is that The Roots are children of the Native Tongue movement. And as a result, they could be seen as copies of that movement and not something all to their own. At least I know I felt that way about the band early on.

But it's clear they had a vision. They took the model of the Native Tongues and added richness to their music in a way that I don't think the Native Tongues achieved.

The musicianship is there. And granted there's a heavy jazz influence throughout the songs. But from Proceed to Distortion to Static to You Ain't Fly shows a range that they continued to develop over time.

It's just a fun album.