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The Roots - Rising Down
| Rapreviews | | There's no question Black Thought, ?uestlove and the Legendary Roots Crew are working hard. In the last 15 years this Philadelphia-based group has put out more full-length albums, EP's, compilations and singles than many artists do for their entire career. It's one thing to put out volumes of work though, and entirely another to be critically acclaimed time and again on every CD to hit store shelves. Even on the extremely rare occasions when The Roots put out something slightly mediocre it's still going to exceed the quality of 95% plus of every other rap album you'll hear in the same year....full text |
| | Avclub | | Even if it didn't begin with a clip of The Roots at war with their old label or boast an incendiary cover that resurrects ugly Jim Crow iconography, the venerable hip-hop outfit's Rising Down would still qualify as a giant "fuck you" to Def Jam in particular and commercial hip-hop as a whole. After the resounding commercial failure of the gritty Game Theory, most acts would retreat into pop singles and slick hooks, but The Roots took the opposite path. Despite guest spots from usual suspects—Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Common—Rising Down is even more uncompromising and less commercial than its predecessor....full text |
| | Slantmagazine | | The final track on the Roots' latest full-length, Rising Down, is conspicuously cheerful. "Rising Up" features the '70s-funk synth pads and super-solid Tropicalia rhythm section you might expect from the first track on a Kanye West record. In the album's only nod to jazziness, it also includes a raspy hook sung by newcomer Chrisette Michele that tells a familiar story: "Yesterday I saw a b-girl crying/I walked up and asked 'What's wrong?'/She told me the radio's been playing the same song all day long." On past Roots records, this kind of lyric might have read as a typical don't-call-me-a-backpacker plaint about homogenized airwaves. Here, though, it comes across as something more....full text |
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The Roots lyrics |
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