The Roots, Game Theory

reviewed by dave heaton

The Roots are on the legendary rap label Def Jam now, and it's clear from their new album Game Theory that they remember the days when that truly meant something, when Def Jam was dropping albums that held together from start to finish, and left a real impression. They remember that Public Enemy was on Def Jam too; they know that legacy of hard-hitting social-commentary. Game Theory's first proper track, "False Media" takes a Public Enemy lyric and turns it into the basis for a song that immediately sets up the album's dark vision of America today. "If I can't work to make / I'll rob and take / either that or / me and my children / are starving and naked," Black Thought rhymes – it's a notion that hits at the core of the urban crisis, at the reasons behind the increasing murder rate in cities like Philadelphia, the Roots' hometown.

That crisis is the driving conceptual force behind the album, and the reason it feels like their most Philly-centered album yet, one that really captures the conflict within the heart and soul of the city, the disconnect between the "next great American city" hype (and related, the luxury condos under construction everywhere, gilding over the fact that nobody here can afford to buy a house anymore) and the rising murder rate, the drug-trade-related violence and just the general poverty so much of the city struggles with. As Black Thought puts it on the album's title track: "Downtown Philly / where it's realer than a heart attack / it wasn't really that ill / until the start of crack / now it's a body caught every night / on the almanac."

This is crack-music from the perspective of city dwellers living the existential quandary of the city, and to match this content the Roots have created their darkest music. It's also the Roots music that most fully utiliizes the nexis among funk, soul, rock and jazz that their style of hip-hop lives in. It's their most visionary album, musically: one where the 'neo-soul' R&B hooks that they love exist comfortably next to Funkadelic-like apocalyptic visions and straight-ahead, head-nodding hip-hop rhythms. They work as one unit, each instrument working tightly with the others. And Black Thought's always potent rhymes work as an integral part of that, not just delivering a song's 'message' but a key part of the sound; on this album, like the group's last, he's really given room to show off his pure rhyming skills. Yet he also shares the mic with a batch of competent friends, from long-missing Roots emcee Malik B and longtime associate Dice Raw to newcomers like Porn and Peedi Peedi (now rumored to be the Roots' newest official member).

This team approach helps make Game Theory the tightest, and most efficent (shortest) Roots album yet. They bring to life a landscape of hurt and malaise in a particularly vivid way, yet within that landscape is a lot of variety, lyrically and musically. Black Thought drops his guard more than usual, being sometimes disarmingly open-hearted about the struggles of life. Tracks like "Clock With No Hands" and "Atonement" try, almost in vain, to point towards a message of hope within the bleakness. Instead of hope they mostly end up with a well-intentioned sort of melancholy. And that atmosphere inevitably leads the Roots to also pay moving tribute to the late producer J Dilla (Jay Dee), who brought so much vision of his own to hip-hop, and worked closely with the Roots often. Game Theory ends with a lengthy eulogy for Dilla, titled "Can’t Stop This," which instead of just dwelling on their personal loss, or even hip-hop's loss, uses it as a jumping-off point to consider hip-hop's present and future. "When it's all full of soul / that's when it means more," one lyric goes. And Game Theory is most definitely meaningful and filled with soul. It's the Roots' most thoughtful album, and by far their deepest, musically and lyrically. To my ears it's also probably their best.

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