Once upon a time, somewhere between my sophomore and junior year in college, the television in the lobby dorm was playing a music video with Erykah Badu singing You Got Me, a song of The Roots I would later learn was written and initially recorded by Jill “Jilly From Philly” Scott. This was an experimental video; in those days not everybody on the song would show up for the music video. Eve, who was signed to Aftermath Entertainment as Eve of Destruction, had a solid sixteen bars on the track around Black Thought, The Roots’ lead vocalist and lyricist. It was a big moment for hip-hop, and one that was absolutely breathtaking at the time when it came to new music.
By the time I heard the track she was just Eve, the first lady of Ruff Ryders, and mysteriously absent from the video. Later on it would all come out that there was a lot of litigation about rights, credits, and such, especially since neither Eve nor Jill Scott were credited as performers or songwriters. Despite of that drama and in part to my lyricist homie Nonymous, I got my hands on the cassette tape Things Fall Apart.
This began my love hate relationship for all things pertaining to The Roots.
Things Fall Apart is a very overhyped album, mostly because a hip-hop band did it, which I’ll come back to later. The reality is, this album has not aged well; there is not one memorable song on Things Fall Apart that has the listener invested enough to learn the lyrics and keep them in their brain for twenty years. There are some okay cuts; outside of You Got Me¸ Act Too (The Love Of My Life (which is a spiritual continuation of I Used To Love H.E.R. by Common, who is featured) and Ain’t Sayin’ Nothin’ New, nothing about the album screams top one hundred classic hip-hop album of all time.
Is Things Fall Apart the best album The Roots ever did? Hell yes. Does it deserve the praise that has been shimmied on it like glitter since its release? Hell no.
Black Thought is a competent lyricist with a moderate vocabulary, but what he and Questlove produces just does not stand the test of time. Most of Black Thoughts cypher offerings are equal to McFadden and Whithead’s solo album; after Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now you realize the rest of the tracks on the album halt any further musical journey and the one hit is a fluke. The only reason that he and Questlove are now in the collective conscious of music in general is their questionable gig as the house band on a late night network talk show nobody watches anymore.
But hey, a gig is a gig when each album you make from your apex is worse than the last.
Act Won of Things Fall Apart deceivingly set the tone of the album, with a host of cameos by Common, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Jazzyfantasees, Mos Def, and Lady B and other lyricists that have made a name for themselves writing love notes to the genre. There are a lot of deep cuts that bubble to the surface (such as Ain’t Saying Nothin’ New) but nothing sticks to the pan in terms of replay value. Guest producers like Jay Dilla fail to coral the full potential of having a live hip-hop band at their fingertips and squanders tracks away into the filler bin that only the cult followers will listen to out of loyalty.
Act Two is a hodgepodge of songs sans You Got Me, featuring a mouthful of iambic pentameter rhymes that definitively prove the second half of the album stands on the shoulders of the title. Cameos by Dice Raw, Beanie Siegel, Erykah Badu, and Eve are not enough to save it on the surface, making it a once a year listen if you just need something to get the kitchen cleaned to. If ever a hip-hop track had an entire side of filler and should have been left blank on the cassette, it was this.
Things Fall Apart is the last hurrah for the 5th Dynasty Crew. During its initial release in the mouth of gangster rap madness, The Roots were the future of hip-hop. Yet from their own arrogance and hype they were damned to stuck in a hip-hop past with no future to venture into and unable to reap the benefits of yesteryear. Having a live hip-hop band was considered fringe in those days, and being that type of freak show in hip-hop was the allure. The gimmick worked, considering the level of commerciality Questlove and Black Thought have now. Back then they got no airplay. The Roots were the kings of the underground, splitting collectively amongst its members on which way they should embark to.
The album will be remembered for all the wrong reasons, specifically the obsession of Questlove being the second coming of Buddy Miles, the departure of half of the group for other endeavors, and a neutered collective still holding on to the brand but effectively is a duo outfit of Black Thought and Questlove. Unfortunately, the contributions of Rahzel, Scratch, Malik B., and Ben Kenney are overshadowed in the mediocrity of what the group is now, and all but erased for what their unique input on Things Fall Apart had the potential to be.
Moral of the story is, things falls apart in a band. At least they got one good album out of it.
I liked this album much better than their latest releases but not as much as their debut.
It was a hit or miss album.