The Roots: The Tipping Point : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The planet's greatest live hip-hop band has a problem. The Roots are staggering under the weight of their own talent and trying to figure out where they fit within the matrix of hip-hop and pop music in general: Are they the public face of the rap underground, or are they reaching for the big time, whatever it takes? Their sixth studio album is calculated to display their range -- buttery pop choruses, hard-as-hell hookless spitting, jittery programmed beats, a bonus jam on George Kranz's club classic "Din Daa Daa" that highlights Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson's drumming -- and it's got a bunch of impressive ideas. The "virtual duet" with Sly and the Family Stone's "Everybody Is a Star," a dubious idea on paper, works out beautifully; instead of rapping over the original song or lifting its chorus, the Roots loosen it up and restructure it into a conversation between Black Thought's flow and the Family Stone's individual interjections.

The downside to The Tipping Point's chameleonic variety is that the Roots too rarely sound like themselves, or even like a collective. Black Thought can channel seemingly any style from hip-hop's history (on the high-speed, old-schoolish "Boom," he pulls off a killer Big Daddy Kane impression), but he rarely has a great moment that's all his own, and there's not much here with the pure emotional power of "You Got Me" or "The Seed (2.0)" -- both of which featured guest singers, not coincidentally. The album's best hook belongs to "Don't Say Nuthin," and it's a novelty: The chorus's gangsta drawl is pushed so far that it's totally unintelligible. Black Thought rises to its challenge with a zinger: "Ain't nothing like the rush I get in front of the band/Onstage with the planet in the palm of my hand." Well, exactly -- and it's strange to hear a group that's made so much of its liver-than-live rhythm section hold it in check so often.