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Goodie Mob and the Roots
Tramps, New York, May 31, 1998
No samplers? No drum machines? No New York representation on stage? You call this hip-hop? If the purveyors of such an aberration are Atlanta's Goodie Mob or Philadelphia's the Roots, the answer is an unqualified yes. As for how well they pull off the feat of delivering engaging hip-hop backed by live instruments on stage, the answer is a somewhat less certain "somewhat."
Following opening performances by Atlanta's Witchdoctor and P.A.,
Goodie Mob's backing band and rapper Khujo took the stage. They
promptly slid into the slow-jam "Free" off their 1995 debut,
Soul Food, and by the end of the song, the whole group,
Gipp, Cee-Lo and T-Mo, had descended upon the platform, roaring
into that record's title track. Sheer energy pulsed through the
ominous "Dirty South;" when they served up "Black Ice," the first
song of the evening from this year's Still Standing, the
staccato vocals and drums hit home with ferocity.
"Fly Away" highlighted one of Goodie Mob's underrated strengths:
Cee-Lo's voice. By harmonizing with backup singers, Cee-Lo
redefines rap's vocal boundaries. His bona fide singing provided a
link between the southern-fried soul music and the beats over which
the Goodie Mob rap, blurring the line between the two musical
styles. On "Beautiful Skin," their ode to black women, Cee-Lo again
took the song to another level of rarified style. They ended their
set with "They Don't Dance No Mo'," an ironic closer considering
that all bodies were in motion, moving to the fast-paced version of
the song.
After a thirty-minute break that threatened to turn anticipation
into impatience, the Roots finally took the stage. Scratch came on
first, warming up the audience with his turntable noises, which
were mimicked with nothing more than his vocal cords. It was a
sound that Rahzel, the human beatbox, then embellished with his
oral percussion. The band got the crowd moving with the jazzy
hip-hop of "Proceed" and "Mellow My Man," (from Do You Want
More?!!!?!) and then displayed the harder style they're moving
toward with "Concerto of the Desperado," off their last release,
Illadelph Halflife.
One of the rips against the Roots has been that they aren't true
hip-hop, that as live musicians with no samples, they more closely
relate to rock than rap. The fact that they're not a traditional
rap group, but an actual band, has hurt their street cred. But when
you strip away the hype and neo-Nineties technology, hip-hop is
beats and rhymes. That is the head and the heart of the music. And
the Roots have these essentials down.
Unfortunately, the Roots did not keep up the momentum they had
built. After a smooth, grooving version of "Push Up Ya lighter" and
a new song, "The Ultimate," the show began a long, slow slide into
self-indulgence. Guestlove kicked off this portion of the show with
a drum solo banging on everything on his kit, including the
microphones. A virtuoso act, certainly, but his descent into
prog-rock theatrics was overblown. Kamal, the keyboardist, took the
floor next, then bassist Hub took a shot at keeping the crowd's
attention from turning to their drinks. Hub's fuzzed-out riffing
might have been more fun to watch if thirty minutes hadn't passed
with out a legitimate, structured song. By the end of the solo
sessions, even members of the band looked bored.
But then came Hip-Hop 101 to the rescue. Those who have seen the
Roots perform know that this is the group's raison d'etre. As they
played the samples used in classic raps *live*, they saluted the
birthplace of hip-hop with snippets of A Tribe Called Quest, Public
Enemy, and the Sugar Hill Gang. Rahzel and Scratch also recreated,
among others, Run DMC's "Sucker MC's" and the Beastie Boys' "Paul
Revere." And they weren't even close to finished.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I will now attempt the impossible," said
Rahzel. "The chorus and the beat at the same time." Impossible? Not
for him. He pulled it off flawlessly.
PETER ROTH