I bought The Roots’ most recent CD, ‘Phrenology’ Saturday evening and have been listening to nothing else since. If you enjoy rap music, it is definitely one you want to pick up.
I personally prefer songs that lower the emphasis on the “Gangsta” mentality and curse words, while raising the emphasis on clever lyrics and flawless producing, and ‘Phrenology’ does this and more. I listen to rap because I like the way the music sounds, and not because I am vicariously living an exciting life through the lyrics of the artist. Claims of “street credibilty” mean nothing to me, although I do bear with the excessive cursing and posturing for the sake of the music. And I have just spent a paragraph making excuses for my choices in music :rolleyes: .
This is exactly the problem with most mainstream rap albums; you either need to be a teenage kid with a pimped-out ride to listen to it, or you need excuses. This is why I recomend ‘Phrenology’ so profusely; It is a genuinely good piece of music.
On first picking it up, I was fairly surprised at the shortness of it. There are only 14 tracks listed on it, and The Roots generally strike me as a group with a lot to say. Once I started listening to it though, I figured it out. Many tracks go longer than 4 minutes, and ‘Water’ is more than 10 minutes long. This is fairly unusual for a rap album, to say the least.
One last thing, as I know this post is getting very long: The interludes are actually bearable . If all radio station’s Shout-Out sessions were as lavishly put together as the one used as an interlude on this CD, I wouldn’t change the station every night at 10.
Buy this CD, you won’t regret it!