The Roots

“Now it’s time to say goodbye…”

With Friday came the end of my week of spying and the wrap-up of
rehearsing, jamming and interviewing in NYC for The Roots. There was a
less scattered pace to the day, but there were still members of the
press constantly filing in and out. Black Thought was shot early on by
Trace TV. Shortly thereafter, a female reporter from a Swiss magazine
entered the dressing room. She reached for her pack of cigarettes and
was firmly told there was no cigarette smoking in the room. With an
incredulous look on her face, she looked at several other guys in the
room who had a different kind of smoke emitting from their mouths.

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah,” Maldog told her.

She scoffed to herself, mumbling something about how that made no
sense, so Black Thought jumped in to smooth things over.

“We’re all control freaks. There aren’t too many things we can
control, but [our dressing room] is one we can,” which put a seemingly
ridiculous situation in perspective. “We’d say the same thing to crack
smoke,” he joked.

The dressing room would intermittently fill up throughout the evening
as press filtered in, folks came in for dinner and the rest of the
band members hung out waiting until they could start practicing in the
studio space. At one point, Thought sequestered himself in the control
room, the last vestige for someone seeking peace and quiet. This was
where Def Jam’s people spent most of their time scanning through
gossip websites. Slowly, but surely, the noise and activity of the
dressing room found its way to the control room. During the confusion,
a female exec from the label was heard commenting about some rapper’s
crazy get-up as an attempt to get him “sexy for the b*tches,”
prompting every male in the room to insist a woman calling other women
b*tches be recorded. Fine. Now we can move on.

During this time, the band scattered. Kirk and Owen rehearsed in the
studio, while Dice Raw and Frankie Knuckles imitated Rick Ross and
T-Pain. Classic material. Maybe everybody was just amped because
tonight would be one of the few moments from all week when everyone
was in the same room at the same time ready to play, but there were
freestyles and impersonations aplenty that night.

Later, more band members found their way into the studio, only for
their personal jam session, they played alternate instruments - Tuba
Gooding Jr. on keys and Frankie Knuckles on ?uestlove’s drums with
Dice on the mic and Owen and Kirk on bass and guitar, respectively, as
usual. Dice rocked a while solo before his Money Making Jam Boy
cohorts, Thought and Truck North, joined him.

As time ticked past the alleged start time of the jam session, Dice
did a playful freestyle, but since yours truly was name-checked in it
a couple times, it automatically gets upgraded to one of the more
awesome rhymes heard all week.

Nine o’clock rolls around and ?uestlove is sitting through yet another
interview. Maldog chills in the dressing room on his computer, while
the rest of the band mingles and continues to randomly jam together.

The jam session finally kicks off with all the members in place around
11 p.m. Dice Raw introduces Black Thought and they jump right into “I
Will Not Apologize.” Finally, after a week full of snippets and
listening to the songs from the album on CD, this was the first time
you actually heard it all come together the way it will be onstage.
The set, again recorded by AOL, included “Rising Up,” a brief detour
into “Jungle Boogie,” a track that didn’t make the album, “Get Busy”
and finally Black Thought ripping “75 Bars (Black’s Reconstruction)”
to close things out.

It was odd to watch the band in full battle armor rocking the small
crowd of supporters because these were the same guys who had just been
chilling behind the scenes, eating, drinking and goofing around like
mere mortals. The band at no time this week seemed larger than life
(even ?uestlove said they’re “painfully normal”), but when they were
warmed up doing their thing, they quickly became “The Roots” again.
There is nothing normal about the way they pulled together to make an
intimate recording feel like an all-out concert experience. At the
end, it all shut down just as quickly as it began, like some traveling
road show of carnies ready to hit the next town. It’s great they’re
friendly (when they want to be) and accessible (sometimes), but make
no mistake that they are ‘The Legendary’ for a reason.