i probably should wait for the first week #'s to have come out, but i dont think i need to see them to guess what theyre going to be like...

im not trying to be an asshole, this is just my thoughts:

i never thought the roots would become as irrelevant to rap as they are right now.

even with the last 2 albums being disastorious in contrast to the first 3 (organix excluded.)
i never thought they'd get to the point where they're are totally irrelevant to rap music...
they always had a niche.

with quest being a musicologist & musical philosopher of sorts, (who is conscious of the rise & fall of all kinds of groups, hiphop & abroad) i never thought he'd allow his own group to descend into the same type of purgatory.

maybe it's all def jams fault.
maybe it's all the roots fault for delivering commerically unviable material and not garnering the interest of the label...

maybe it's alittle of both.

the 1 thing i am sure of is black thought needs to do a solo album while he is still in his 30's.

Stop it right now, my son.
Enough with the ignorant banter.
The force is strong with you.
But you do not realize the power of the darkside.

*hoooooooooooh*

Only by joining *ME*,
you can fulfill your destiny
and become an asset to us.
Your hatred is impressive,
but not potent enough.

*hoooooooooooh*

Come to the darkside, son.
And your consumption of hatred
shall be *cooommmmmplete!!!*
no longer will you make
weak, bullshit ass posts like these,
nor would you have use for the edit button.

Come now...

*hoooooooh*

Touch it, bring it, pay it,watch it,

turn it, leave it, stop, format it.

*hoooooooh*

***
'I don't push a lot of vehicles, but I'll push a used one with a tape deck if it's feasible.' - Reggie Noble

***

@ChickFingaz
XBL: ChickFingaz
FB: fb.com/chickfingazmd
Skype: Chickfingaz
Surelyfunke.com

LMAO.....

but 100% cosign....

if you believe that to be true, why are you on here???

Irrelevant?

The Roots just made the album of the year!

With one album they've just dragged hip-hop out of it's coma, thrown ice-water in it's face and thrashed it's ass!

Check the reviews...surely an irrelevant band wouldn't get almost unanimous praise for their latest effort?

Its time to realise that Nas won't ever make another Illmatic, the Wu won't ever make another 36 Chambers and The Roots will never make another DYWM!!?!

Embrace change and be greatful that The Roots are at the top of their game making thrilling, innovative new music and not flogging the same old dead horse like so many so called 'relevant' hip-hop acts.

It seems your opinion is almost as big as your asshole now. Almost.

You posting at Three Six mafia's website and complaining about their irrelevance?

You over at the big community site for Fat Joe???

You are the one who is no longer releveant.

And if I see you at a show I'll fuck you up like your father did to your mothers womb.

Now get the fuck off these boards and go teach Nina Hartley some shit about sucking dick.

Love,
Soundscan

i didnt insult anyone.
so why are you insulting me for how i feel?

im not a fan of fat joe or three 6 mafia.
nor do i feel they are irrelevant. (well, maybe fat joe alittle bit)

could you please refrain from insulting my parents in a discussion about the roots.

dude, why are you taking it personal like The Roots are your close personal friends. lol

_______________________________

Gil Scott-Heron and free thought t-shirts: http://www.sanitytshirts.com

I wouldn't say it's thier fault. I mean nobody good is relevant now. They don't like whats good they like songs about Grills & Chains that hang low. Lil' John put Hip Hop in a coma when that get low shit came out.

______________________________
-INSERT SOMETHING CATCHY HERE-

eat a dick cause your opinion fucking sucks

"lurking in the boards since 99"

for the roots just on the level of respect. and the industry is aware of their skill so i wouldnt say that no one checks for them.

a) dont know the roots have a new album
b) dont CARE the roots have a new album
c) will never see the video
d) will never hear the album

but i hope im wrong...

were you abused as a child? scared to smile? they called you ugly?

how does one get filled with so much hate?

not at all, actually.

i'm just concerned about you as a human being.

LOL

" Now who can stop the music running through these veins, infinitely going against the grain" -Black Thought

" Kanye died for your sins. Respect that. "
- Questlove

...and I 'd be willing to bet you that 95% of the cats who DO post on this site don't give a rats #$$ about any southern rapper whose name begins with young or lil!!! most of them are totally irrelevant to everything outside of cars and teeth(or teef if you're down there). And don't try to feed me that "yeah, but look at how much they sell..." - whatever, numbers don't mean a thing - I don't care if they drive Bentley's with diamond gas tanks, 98.7685% of those dudes are TOTALLY WACK!!! If it wasn't for the Dungeon Family(stop sleeping on Rico Wade), I'd have said 100%. Roots irrelevant...stay off the Nyquil.

period. you think just cuz Jigga can go 5 times plat 5 million people are avid listeners? no, he makes catchy, good shit and most of his buyers buy his shit just to jam to it and dont really care what he is trying to do with his music. The Roots' audience on the other hand, has a a very small passive listener audience by comparison, so i think your argument is hollow.

hmph

maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe , maybe

what a frickin idiotic post....

so you are saying that Jay-Z signed an irrelevant act?

so you are saying that BT is better off on his own?

GTFOH

am i the only one that has no desiere to hear Black Thought
on beats that aren't the Roots songs?

what for?

"Think I rock jewels to impress you? What the fuck
n!gg@z commenting on my shit for?" - Hov

>am i the only one that has no desiere to hear Black Thought
>on beats that aren't the Roots songs?
>
>what for?

Because he's dope.

Why shouldn't Thought do a solo record? Though he obviously rolls deep with the Roots, I'm almost certain he has his own ideas. Why should he be put in a box?

Personally, I'd like to hear a Black Thought solo. A dope emcee, with unlimited creativity. Why not?

"I have the scars to prove the clock strikes with her hands." — Saul Williams

"I don't see why people are so scared of music, it ain't gonna bite you." — bnicedh

Cosign. Who wants to hear Guru without Primo's boom bap?
_____________________________________
R.I.P. Brother Yancey

I can understand the want, and the drive to be on top, but its not in the cards, nor should it be. The roots is far to refined to hold top place on the hiphop charts, its been proven to us over and over only the shittiest catch phrases and poorley assembled personalities can hold down those reigns, for a few months then there gone.

I don't know why you would be concerned or surprised that 95% percent of ppl havn't clicked with the roots, that should be expected, most good music is thrown to the wayside, and if its lucky remember 20 years later for being ahead of its time.

I'm not a hiphop head, im a rocker, i've always been a rocker but the pharcyde and the roots opened me up to hiphop (and i always liked listening to dre in the 90s). Maybe we look at things different, because we were NEVER depressed when one of our favorite bands wasn't in the top 5 or even top 200, as long as they were living (and i believe the roots are living well) I am happy.

Infact to be perfectly honest I think your looking at this the wrong way, the roots are an oddity, the saying "the brightest bulbs burn fastest" is very true, but the roots have found a loophole. Do you think if they had found radio success from their second album they would have put out all the subsequent albums that made them LEGENDARY, i doubt it. They have had something in my oppinion (im not in their shoes so maybe its different)better, longevity.

So to sum it up, longevity>relevance to a SHITTY mainstream community of artist who can to me seem to only find time to rap about how fucking great they are at rapping. You think ppl are going to remember guys like little john as a tallented musician, no they're going to remember him because he was a joke, funny to laugh at. The roots, they will be remembered as musicians, take me to the bank on that.

"Perfection is not attained when you can't add anymore, perfection is attained when you can't take anymore away."

www.nickbrandeauphoto.com
www.lightstalkers.org/nickbrandeau

co-sign...when people talk about music 50 years from now, the roots will be as revered as the velvet underground, the stooges, the modern lovers, brian jones, gram parsons, grant green, and nico, all of which were seriously slept on in their heyday. i can't speak for the roots themeselves, but if it were me i'd much rather have the catalog of impeccable albums and an incredible legacy than be relegated to a pop-trivia question about novelty rap songs of the 00's. the real question should be: why can't we just appreciate them now and not worry about soundscan #s?

"when's the last time you heard a funky diabetic?"

I don't know about that.

The Tipping point had most of my hood (mostly non Roots peeps) bobbin da heads.

R.I.P. #21

http://twitter.com/bigbthreethree

I still Luv HER
http://bigbrian68.podomatic.com/

Game Theory is at least twice as good, making it somewhere between great and phenomenal. And I bet 3/4 of the peeps in your hood won't bob their heads to half of it.

Plus I got niggas in DC
That'll hit you for 3G's and a box of Yum's carry out!
Little Brother


Protest!
http://www.hal-pc.org/~edi/lih.jpg

I'd like to provide you with perspective on maybe what it's like to be The Roots and then have you think about your points and possibly consider how much they lack substance.

I'll start off by saying I would NEVER want to be a member of The Roots. A band like this has ultimately painted themselves in a corner which leaves them open to be critiqued in ways most artist never encounter.

1st Point: The Roots are musicians that are playing a style of music that has very unreasonable limitations when it comes to creativity. Hip-Hop is sample based music where the musical changes are kept to a minimum. For example, let's take the guitar in the song "In The Music"...It's basically 4 bars of repetitive 16th notes that repeat throughout most of the song.

This is how Hip-Hop is constructed and its one of the only forms of music that's based solely on the "Break Beat" format. With that said...It's almost boring for an actual musician to live within this confined structure when they're trained to play music that has fewer restrictions.

If you've ever been in a studio and tried to colab with a musician who's never played on a lot of hip-hop tracks before...then you may have seen how difficult it is for them to just play 4 bars over and over. For real musicians it's DULL and because they have the ability to do so much more....it's a frustrating ordeal if they really don't LOVE Hip-Hop.


2nd Point: Now let's take that perspective and apply it to The Roots. Their makeup consists of two drummers, a bass player, a keyboard player, a guitar player and a world class emcee.

Their audience is full of old-school Hip-Hop heads, and hippie kids from all types of races/nationalities who are very critical listeners. Most of these fans are actually musicians and artist themselves. Because of these factors and their incredible track record of putting out superior music...They have an unrealistic pressure to continue to make better music while being confined to a format that's full of 4 to 8 bar breaks, and only being able to stretch that out to about 5 minutes of music because that's the attention span of the average listener.

In contrast, let's look at John Coltrane's 1957 release of Blue Train (It's on my desk at work so forgive me for going on a tangent). This album has 5 songs....that's right 5 SONGS. The lengths are 10:39, 9:06, 7:11, 7:55 & 7:03.

I pointed this out to illustrate that musicians (which The Roots ARE) haven't always had to strangle their creativity for the sake of "The Industry". This goes back to my point of how hard it is for them to make "good" music when the crux of their ability is hampered by the format of Hip-Hop.

Now let’s talk about the audience a little more. The Roots have VERY critical fans...where in contrast; someone like Young Joc could release the same type of music year after year and as long as the machine is pushing it....he'll never have to worry about the type of critiques that The Roots encounter.


I could go on, but I'm sure I'm not saying shit that's particularly mind blowing. This is common knowledge, but I do think that this perspective gets loss when we try to compare them from album to album. I love the integrity of their art and the effort they put into their craft.


On last point:

Thought has been getting a lot of crap from the media and fans lately. I do think that he sounds bored on the mic sometimes, BUT he too has the same problems in front of him when it comes to the music. Emcees are supposed to get it all in within 16 to 32 bars...AND on top of that, constructing real complex cadences (which he CAN DO) in most instances is a turn off for audiences. So once again you have someone whose ability is hampered by a format that doesn't reward acceptional skills.

You'd never see a rule in the NBA that point guards can't go to their opposite hand when going to the hole because the "crowd" can only take in so much.





Lastly, FUCK ya'll haters....

I'm done for now









You don't impress me!!
http://www.myspace.com/bluejay1972

Dude's aint starving, it's not all about numbers. I'm sure it would be nice to sell huge, but if you see the roots live you know these guys are enjoying what they do...
It's really all that matters in the end.

Xbox Live gamertag: ILLPOOFLINGER

The Roots delivered their product (hot music) to their target market, however specific that market is. They made a tight album that their core fans will love. I guess if their goal was to sell a lot of records, the easy way would be for them to make snap msuic? Is that what you want of them?

_______________________________

(((BEATS BY LANSTARR)))

www.lanstarr.com
www.dirtybathwater.com
www.myspace.com/lanstarr

you done crying for attention?

~~~~~~~~~~~~

www.itsallthewaylive.net

www.twitter.com/allthewaylive

man i wrote three paragraphs, and HV counters better in like one line...teach me the ways jedi master.

"Perfection is not attained when you can't add anymore, perfection is attained when you can't take anymore away."

www.nickbrandeauphoto.com
www.lightstalkers.org/nickbrandeau

that's just my opinion.

i needed to change my avy.

1) mongo was right- you are a 'fucktard'

2)http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/roots/gametheory#users

@}-,-`-

He looks determined without being ruthless
Something heroic in this man, there's a courage about him
Doesn't look like a killer
Comes across so calm, acts like he has a dream
Full of passion
~

before they were always the band that you thought was gonna blow up big time. back in the Illadelph Halflife/Things Fall Apart days they had maybe a bigger buzz about them from outside their close circles. but i think when they dropped Phrenology they kind of wrote their ticket to become a group that was content playing their kind of music to their fans. which is fine. i think the relavence you talk about has more to do with the mindstate of the fans than anything a band could do.

Relavence is relative to some idea that music progresses or evolves, becomes more efficient or 'better' as time moves on. but you could also argue that music simply expresses the state of mind that the people are at collectively. like ?uest has said many a times, 'the industry sells image, not music'.

look at outkast. they literally went diamond last time, and yes they've had some internal conflict creatively, but it looks like people have moved on. they're not as interested in outkast no matter how good the music or how compelling their backstory. in american music culture, people move on very rapidly. you're literaly only as good as your last single.

the only act with a similar aesthetic to The Roots that does well commercially is Kanye and he's more known for being a pecuilar person and an anomaly amoungst the regular hip-hop crowd. if you took Kanye's music and put J Dilla's persona to it, he'd probably sell as much as Dilla does.


I guess the disappointment that you allude to in your post is that you thought that ?uest was smart enough to stay ahead of the game. In a sense he has. Has anyone in hip-hop had as much relavence by just sticking to the actual craft of making music as they have had? you might be able to claim the greats, people like Rakim and Nas. And I'll give you that Nas probably sold more albums total, but look at supposed greats like Rakim or even Biggie Smalls. I bet The Roots have sold more albums than Rakim over the life span of their careers. Plus The Roots are still selling out venues across the world. It's like Chuck D says at the intro at the beginning of IH, "will The Roots hit commercial success or will they remain an enigma?" i think they'll always remain an enigma, but there's always a segment of the population that prefers mystery to bluntness. and they'll always have a spot playing shows if nothing else just because of their skill and reputation.

<--- Me when my head hits the pillow

Irrelevant how? Irrelevant to clear channel commercial radio? Probably.

Irrelevant to the advancement of hip-hop and music in general? Fuck nah. The album is totally relevant to anyone who likes good, future-forward music.

Fuck the hate. Especially the dumb hate like this.

...will be long gone by the time the Roots drop their next album.

i hear u dude fo real, but listen the roots arent commerical and they will never will be, if u like real hip hop u like them, i wish they could make more money and sell more records then anybody in the game cuz they are real hip hop but, they decide what they wanna do a stay real is them, so we should all be glad they havent changed

Leave if they suck THAT much to you.
Damn.



This type of shit is pointless.

sorry.

Is this just the trendy thing to say along with complaining about Def Jam not promoting the album enough? I'll agree with the latter but I got beef with the former. I mean, the Roots, irrelevant? How is that so. I saw them on the cover of the Boston Globe last week. I heard they were on NBC's morning show or maybe it was CBS or something but that is across the country shit. MTVu's got them doing shows and are putting up links to live performances, shit I saw Thought and ?uestlove talking to John Narris on the VMA awards. You've seen the amount of reviews pouring into the okay boards and they are all positive. Irrelevant, I don't think so.

you couldn't be more wrong...

@}-,-`-

He looks determined without being ruthless
Something heroic in this man, there's a courage about him
Doesn't look like a killer
Comes across so calm, acts like he has a dream
Full of passion
~

I respect Kelvin's right to his opinion, but he sounds stupid as shit. Luckily, I don't concern myself with the "industry" and the Roots' relevance in comparison to the likes of 50 Cent & Diddy (who must be relevant since they have beef & albums about to drop). The haters & naysayers can harp all you want on record sales & Def Jam's support. This album is like a fine aged Pinot Noir that you savor and most of you fools are used to drinking crappy White Zinfandel. If the Roots aren't relevant, look for your hip hop & your discussion elsewhere.