Black thoughts

The Roots' mo' better blues

The Roots' new Things Fall Apart (MCA) throws down a pretty large gauntlet right up front. The first sound you hear comes from Spike Lee's Mo' Better Blues -- Denzel Washington, as self-absorbed buppie trumpeter Bleek Gilliam, arguing art and audience with upstart saxophonist Shadow (Wesley Snipes). "If we had to depend on black people to eat," Gilliam insists, "we would starve to death. You've been out there . . . on the bandstand -- you look out in the audience . . . you see Japanese, you see West German, Slabovic, anything except our people, man, it makes no sense, it incenses me, that our own people don't realize our own heritage, our own culture -- this is our music."

"Bullshit," Shadow replies -- "the people don't come because you grandiose motherfuckers don't play shit that they like! If you played the shit that they like, then people will come. Simple as that."

I'm still not sure who the Roots side with, though it's obvious they saw something in Gilliam's indictment of black music's supposed core audience. As guest MC Common chuckles, somewhat nervously, on Things' "Act Too (Love of My Life)," "When we perform, it's just coffeeshop chicks and white dudes," a boho choir waiting to be preached to -- and on some level, that has to be as cold a comfort for a group like the Roots as the knowledge that they're "huge in Europe."

The title Things Fall Apart is borrowed from Dr. Chinua Achebe's novel of colonial Nigeria -- Roots MC/drill sergeant Black Thought name-checks Achebe on "100% Dundee." Achebe took the title from Yeats' "The Second Coming," a vision of apocalypse far iller than anything in Busta Rhymes' oeuvre. Add to that the grim images that adorn Things' five limited-edition CD covers -- a firebombed church, a dead mobster clutching the Ace of Spades, riot cops chasing black kids in 1950s Brooklyn -- and you're primed for a sullen, why-hip-hop-sucks-in-'99 polemic that sings the century-closing mo' worse blues.

But as anyone who's ever seen them live is well aware, the Roots are entertainers first and cantankerous, eat-your-vegetables classicists second. Things doesn't bitch, it leads by example, blessing all those coffeeshop chicks and white dudes with a kinetic record as thick and soulful as drummer/bandleader Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson's perennially impressive 'fro. The songs haven't lost the bebop lilt that informed 1995's Do You Want More?!!!??! (check out Leonard Hubbard's swingin' bass vamp at the end of "Dynamite"). But as ?uestlove puts it in his voluminous liner notes, Things was designed to sound "more like an old school Marley Marl joint . . . as opposed to a Brand New Heavy [sic] joint."

That means a renewed commitment to density and noize. Things is reported to be one of the most expensive hip-hop albums ever recorded, but you wouldn't know it from the final mix, a dirty, overloaded sound clash where paper-cut snares smack against elephantine bass and rattling kalimbas wrestle with distorted tambourines, hazy keys, and (in a Roots first) slashing turntable scratches.

And though I'd like, just once, to see a hip-hop crew cut a record without a busload of "special guests," at least the Roots have great taste. Do You Want More?!!??! and 1996's Illadelph Halflife both featured Cassandra Wilson; Q-Tip, D'Angelo and Bahamadia also cameo'd on Illadelph. This time around, Mos Def and Kweli of Black Star electrify "Double Trouble" and Zap Mama's Marie Daulne wraps delicate vocal hiccups around Rahzel's improbably cool mouth-music trumpet riff on "Act Two (Love of My Life.)" "Act Two" may be the Roots' proudest moment to date, with Common revisiting the central metaphor of his own "I Used To Love H.E.R." (hip-hop as the troubled ex you can't forget) over strings by Larry Gold, a Philly mainstay who conducted many a Gamble & Huff classic.

The string quartet turns up again on "You Got Me," a tense, pessimistic slow jam. The track is a masterpiece of feel rather than of form -- Eve of Destruction plays Roberta Flack to Black Thought's Donny Hathaway, Erykah Badu flits through the chorus like Billie Holiday's ghost, and ?uestlove disturbs the fragile peace with a jittery jungle break. And don't miss the video -- sunny Philly as "Dark City" narcropolis.

The Roots are dreamin', of course, if they think Things Fall Apart will save hip-hop from itself. The album debuted behind Eminem's The Slim Shady LP on last week's Billboard charts, demonstrating how the Bleek Gilliams of the world got so cynical -- entertaining ignorance kept edging their product in the clutch. I'd call this one a moral victory if that didn't sound so criminally reductive. So let's call it what it is: a crew of unrepentantly grandiose motherfuckers, with the arrogance to profile like black music's Second Coming -- and almost the talent to pull it off.