The Roots

By Chuck D

If I have one problem with rap music, and this is one of my only complaints, it's that cats are stuck in the grind of using the same beats per minute all the time. But rhythm and tempo are elements that the Roots always mess around with. They're a great band, and they can give you any kind of vibe, from a lighthearted, Stetsasonic kind of groove to a jazzy, a Tribe Called Quest feel, but they always go out of their way to experiment and stay responsible to their own point of view. I think their objective is pretty clear: they're trying to bring a true musical aesthetic to rap.

The group--Tariq (Black Thought) Trotter, drummer Ahmir (?uestlove) Thompson, keyboardist Kamal Gray, bassist Leonard (Hub) Hubbard, vocal percussionists Kyle (Scratch) Jones and Rozell (Rahzel) Brown [not pictured] and Malik (Malik B.) Abdul-Bassit--is time tested. In various incarnations, they have been together since 1987. When you see ?uestlove with his big Afro behind the drum kit, you know you're going to get a good show.

That brings us to the most important part: you've got to be able to perform live, to get in front of the public and sweat for them. Nobody sweats better than the Roots. They knew early on that because their music is kind of esoteric, they wouldn't have immediate, top of the chart-type appeal in the U.S. So, as we in Public Enemy did, they went around the world first. They scoured countries trying to build their reputation and audience the right way, by paying their dues two or three hours at a time in places such as Ljubljana, Slovenia, that most Americans haven't heard of. That's an everlasting statement of their commitment to the craft, and it's one of the criteria that separate them from the Wu-Tang Clan and other great hip-hop acts. Wu-Tang has as many seeds of interest across the world as the Roots do, but you have to go to each one of those seeds and water them. You've got to be able to get in front of the public and make your music come to life.

In music today you can make a political statement just by not being stupid for the sake of popularity. A lot of groups are dumbing themselves down to be popular with a whole bunch of 13- and 14-year-olds. The Roots, whose members are mostly in their late 20s, say, "Forget that. We're not kids. We're not pretending to be. We're hip-hop, and we'll lay it out on the line, and eventually we'll attract them."

I have a way of evaluating musicians that I like to call the MOVE theory. M is for music, O is for objective, V is for visual recognition, E is for entertainment value or how a band plays live. How do the Roots stack up? Right at the top.

Chuck D is a co-founder of the group Public Enemy and of Rapstation.com He is launching a new website, SlamJamz.com this month