lol. I'm gonna be a fanboy here for minute. We were trying to do a Brand New Heavies 'Heavy Rhyme Experience' thing and decided to stop when we heard this. We weren't gonna get anywhere without learning hip hop production after this album. We were like 15 and didn't want to be seen as a 'poor-man's Roots' for the rest of our lives. lol

Distortion to Static

For me, probably THE definitive use of EP with tremolo, leslie cabinet, whatever the hell they did with that; that hip hop used to love so much in the early 90's. I've read that Quest was convinced he needed to start using EPs by the Pharcyde's '4 better or worse.....This track did the same for me and my friends. Quest's book kinda got me down in parts...like when they tried to release this song and experienced a dancefloor empty when it came on. I suppose it's easy to say from the outside...but it seems like they had trouble accepting what they WERE and they wanted a reaction that just wasn't realistic for what they were creating. 'So what' by Miles Davis would empty a dancefloor too. And I can almost guarantee that no one is singing the praises of whatever was playing that night before 'Distortion.....' came on in 2015.

What Goes On

I'm guessing that this is the song they spent the most time on. I absolutely LOVED the way the two basslines created that dissonant thing. I wouldn't use this to show younger people nowadays....but I have and would still use it to show older jazzheads who STILL might not get hip hop.

Lazy Afternoon

Not really a favorite track but it has history for me. When it came out....we were still trying to convince our bass player to go in a more hip hop direction. He was down with the funk and soul but his real heart was in prog rock and hip hop was still something he didn't consider 'musician's music' y'know? Well, he LOVED the bassline in this song. And at around the 3 minute mark....when the bassline gets more melodic. He kinda riffed on that (read as 'borrowed') and we made a pretty good song out of it. We had to convince him that, in hip hop, it was ok to reference other things and call them your own if you flip it around a bit.

Can't overstate how important this album was for me (and us) at that time. In a paradoxical way....it actually forced us to get into more traditional hip hop styled production. We were already attempting the live hip hop thing and this album straight up humbled us. It was like we saw open fields of potential and then saw the door shut by a group we were never gonna be able to match. We were trying to do a Brand New Heavies thing but actually try to SOUND like hip hop with our instruments. Which is basically EXACTLY what the Roots were with this album. And even moreso with the Illadelph. It forced us to try new things and if memory serves, my friend bought our first sampler around 5 months after we heard it.

But that concept....emulating hip hop production with instruments....is the Roots and the Roots alone. They weren't playing funk or soul with emcees rapping over it. They were playing hip hop. A lot of that means minimalism, repetition (playing like a loop). Arguably, Illadelph is a clearer example of this. But they came with that concept first and no one has ever unseated them or done it better.