Good "Game Theory"
By Mark Anthony Neal
SeeingBlack.com Contributing Editor
This is not a popular view, but I’m thinking that much of the exoticism that we all have scripted on to the body of work that is The Roots, has everything to do with how unimaginative the commercial hip-hop landscape had become over the last decade. Read any of the group’s best work against Greg Osby’s 3D Lifestyles (1993), any of Steve Coleman’s collaborations with The Metrics or even Guru’s three Jazzmatazz projects and it becomes clear just how tame and safe the band has been. It’s not the band’s fault though, that after a steady diet of puffydiddydaddy, that we all thought that Things Fall Apart (1999) was manna (or some digital Achebe) for the desert nation. The disappointment we all registered after more-than-a-few listens of The Tipping Point (2004) was simply reality settling in—It didn’t really matter no more. Sure a few folk got antsy about the group’s move to Island/Def Jam as if they really believed The Roots were an underground group. Most so-called underground acts don’t grace the covers of mainstream magazines and don’t have the kind of promotional support that Okayplayer affords The Roots. Just because you don’t move units don’t mean you underground.
And perhaps it is here that we could place the blame on the band’s front-man, who is about as everyday-man as they come. In a world populated with nigga9s (a nigger shot nine times), rapping CEOs hawking Hewlett Packard laptops, and the great white hope, Black Thought was a lunch-pail cat. Like CL Smooth, MC Ren, and DMC before him, Black Thought simply put in a day’s work on the mic. In some strange way, this is why Game Theory is the most important Roots’ recording since Things Fall Apart. If we could imagine the lunch-pail cat as a barometer for what’s happening in America—I’m talking about the cats who simply punch the clock, do their work, retire to the crib and do it all over again the next day without even a hint of reservation—then it should not be a surprise, given the Iraqi theater (as they correctly described war before television), (un)rising gas prices, corporate downsizing, voter fraud, rising healthcare cost, the Nancy-Gracing of corporate media and the like, that the lunch pail cat is on the brink of rage. Black Thought is the embodiment of that rage in commercial hip-hop, as Game Theory is a sonic assault on the status quo. And assault is not too fine a term; the opening tracks of Game Theory—“False Media,” “Game Theory,” “Don’t Feel Right” and “In the Music”—are like waking up from a street fight that you lost.
Read the Full Essay at SeeingBlack.com
By Mark Anthony Neal
SeeingBlack.com Contributing Editor
This is not a popular view, but I’m thinking that much of the exoticism that we all have scripted on to the body of work that is The Roots, has everything to do with how unimaginative the commercial hip-hop landscape had become over the last decade. Read any of the group’s best work against Greg Osby’s 3D Lifestyles (1993), any of Steve Coleman’s collaborations with The Metrics or even Guru’s three Jazzmatazz projects and it becomes clear just how tame and safe the band has been. It’s not the band’s fault though, that after a steady diet of puffydiddydaddy, that we all thought that Things Fall Apart (1999) was manna (or some digital Achebe) for the desert nation. The disappointment we all registered after more-than-a-few listens of The Tipping Point (2004) was simply reality settling in—It didn’t really matter no more. Sure a few folk got antsy about the group’s move to Island/Def Jam as if they really believed The Roots were an underground group. Most so-called underground acts don’t grace the covers of mainstream magazines and don’t have the kind of promotional support that Okayplayer affords The Roots. Just because you don’t move units don’t mean you underground.
And perhaps it is here that we could place the blame on the band’s front-man, who is about as everyday-man as they come. In a world populated with nigga9s (a nigger shot nine times), rapping CEOs hawking Hewlett Packard laptops, and the great white hope, Black Thought was a lunch-pail cat. Like CL Smooth, MC Ren, and DMC before him, Black Thought simply put in a day’s work on the mic. In some strange way, this is why Game Theory is the most important Roots’ recording since Things Fall Apart. If we could imagine the lunch-pail cat as a barometer for what’s happening in America—I’m talking about the cats who simply punch the clock, do their work, retire to the crib and do it all over again the next day without even a hint of reservation—then it should not be a surprise, given the Iraqi theater (as they correctly described war before television), (un)rising gas prices, corporate downsizing, voter fraud, rising healthcare cost, the Nancy-Gracing of corporate media and the like, that the lunch pail cat is on the brink of rage. Black Thought is the embodiment of that rage in commercial hip-hop, as Game Theory is a sonic assault on the status quo. And assault is not too fine a term; the opening tracks of Game Theory—“False Media,” “Game Theory,” “Don’t Feel Right” and “In the Music”—are like waking up from a street fight that you lost.
Read the Full Essay at SeeingBlack.com
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