The Roots, Home Grown! The Beginners Guide to Understanding The Roots, Volumes One and Two

reviewed by dave heaton

Often touted as hip-hop's only true band, The Roots are also one of the most versatile bands in music today, period. What other group would...back up Jay-Z and collaborate with Roy Ayers...be touted by MTV as a possible successor to Phish...cover old hip-hop songs in concert, and Led Zeppelin and Nirvana...play a show at a mostly classical music venue, and ask TV on the Radio and Deerhoff to open for them, and have a New Orleans jazz band play with them during their set. The list could go on. Though the Roots generally use their skills to hone their own forward-thinking style of hip-hop, musically they often seem capable of anything.

The music on the two separate Home Grown! volumes - a deft mix of hits, remixes, alternate versions, and rare tracks - outlines in depth what the Roots' music is all about. Including some of the best tracks from their album along with all the unheard stuff helps the sets live up to the "beginners guide to understanding the Roots" sub-title. Alternate versions of their songs alternately show them loosening up their sound further, incorporating dub reggae into "Break You Off" for example, and trying to tighten it up and keep it powerful (as on the "Don't Say Nuthin" remix). Jill Scott singing in Erykah's stead on "You Got Me" shades that song in a different light, while an alternate "Essaywhuman?!!!!" is even looser and more free than the one on Do You Want More?.

While both discs show off the Roots' skills in a format that both fans and newcomers will find appealing, both discs' liner notes reveal another side of the Roots. ?uestlove's detailed notes on each songs tell the tale of a group who can do anything but is never sure which direction to go. Take the complex balancing act of trying to both appeal to listeners and take music in new directions, add to it the difficulties of following your own instincts in a money-driven, major-label world, and you've got a seemingly never-ending series of conundrums. The liner notes reveal Home Grown!'s previously unreleased songs to represent a host of routes not taken: songs that seemed too loose for mass audiences (the fantastic live versions from Gilles Peterson's BBC radio show), songs that didn't fit with the current "marketplace" (the apocalyptic Things Fall Apart outtake "Quicksand Millennium"), a song that was attempted with over 10 different guest vocalists because the label kept rejecting them ("Break You Off", here featuring Neo and eventually released on Phrenology with Musiq as the singer).

Following your own inspiration is tricky when money is at play. Even figuring out one solid path to take within a group made up of individual talents is no doubt tough. Home Grown! paints the Roots's career as one made up of constant decisions and choices. These two volumes offer a fascinating look at the paths chosen, with glimpses of what might have been. The final Roots cds released by Geffen, they also set the scene nicely for The Roots' next album Game Theory, due out in '06. This time they're recording for Def Jam Left, the new label Jay-Z is starting specifically to give artists more freedom over their own work. He told Billboard last summer that the label would be "artist-driven" and not guided by Soundscan; here's hoping the slackening of monetary concerns will take the Roots to even greater heights.

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