The Roots f. Malik B. "In the Music"

I had a running joke recently with a few friends regarding The Roots’ current album-naming strategy, speculating as to which popular social theory would be their next album title, following The Tipping Point and the current Game Theory. Freakonomics? Blink? The Long Tail? We came to the conclusion that most pop-social theories would probably make good album titles for The Roots, but that an intellectual relationship with Malcolm Gladwell wasn’t necessarily a good thing for the band (we didn’t speculate as to Gladwell). That sort of stuff is fun to read on planes, but when it seeps into rap lyrics, yeah. So after the shapeless Phrenology and the pointless (ha) Tipping Point, it seemed that the direction the Roots were destined to go, instead of the timelessly dark-yet-celebratory potency of the amazing Illadelph Halflife and Things Fall Apart, was going to be marked by pseudo-intellectual philosophizing and flat, aimless jamming and Cody Chestnutt. But while the sub-Blackalicious-ish slam sloganeering on Theory opener “False Media” (that actually rhymes “Littleton” with “Ritalin,”) is a clear and unfortunate stylistic leftover, the next seven songs after it show clear as crystal that the group in fact does remember what it really should be doing with its life. They’re tight and sharp again, with a pulse that’s more lively than ever because they’re trying to make rap beats now instead of auditioning as the next house band for Gamble and Huff or whatever. Another large portion of this resurgence can be attributed, on for instance “In the Music” (mp3), to the glorious return of the unassuming but incredibly enjoyable and gnarling Malik B. Over the song’s hammer-n-anvil percussion, slowed-down Knight Rider guitar pluck, and occasional sci-fi synths, he scratches out some explicit imagery with his characteristically staggered flow: “I’m giving you a jawful/Of somethin awful/Yo my theoretic is leaded/Come and set it/The shit bang and leave you diabetic for paramedics.” Malik is the closest The Roots get to the brooding antisociality of Wu-Tang, and his presence in the group again, providing the dark id to Black Thought’s progressive-minded ego, is a good sign, hopefully of where the group’s future ambitions lie. Anything that keeps them from naming their next album The World is Flat is fine with me.