The Roots-How I Got Over (Island/Def Jam)

In a fast food nation of the music industry, where albums are more disposable than ever, artists are manufactured in bulks by labels trying to force a hit and the attention span of the fans are shorter than the shelf lives of the records themselves, what is a group, who has been releasing records since 1993, to do? Simple…they do what has brought them this far, which is do what has made them revered and respected by so many. This is what Philadelphia Hip-Hop band The Roots have done with their latest release titled “How I Got Over”. Brilliantly crafted to the point where each song beautifully meshes to the next, the mood of the album starts almost with a dose of a sadness of reality as rapper Truck North rhymes, “Tapped, no shield, no sword/The unbeaten path got my soul so sore” over moody piano playing in the track “Walk Alone”. The song titled “Dear God 2.0” featuring Monsters of Folk continues to take one into a deeper feeling of almost a point of gloom, but in the most beautiful fashion. Frontman Black Thought is respected as one of the best emcees in Hip-Hop but rather than continuing to try to prove how great of a lyricist he is as demonstrated in the past, he chooses to speak on today’s current affairs of the world. Long time Philly affiliate Dice Raw sings many of the hooks for the songs of the album and as strange as it may sound, it actually works as he eerilly croons “Everything’s changing around me and I wanna change to” in “Now or Never” featuring Phonte of Little Brother fame. “How I Got Over” is the musical nourishment that music lovers have been craving for and what better group to go against the grain and provide that fulfillment than The Roots.