Zilla Rocca remembers the co-founder of the Roots as a hometown hero.

Weird Al, the older gawd, is making the PR rounds for Alpocalypse in singularly strange fashion. A parody of Gaga’s Warhol-Madonna mimicry and appearing with the Roots to play “Accordian” on the Madvillain track of the same name. The wonderfulness of the weird one was nicely captured by fellow parody titan Blockhead: “There are many […]

For all the derision that Pitchfork’s hip hop coverage inspires, Nate Patrin’s treatise on the ongoing influence of Dilla reads among the most compelling and comprehensive that I’ve read anywhere. It’s easy to play the connect the dots game with Dilla, but much harder to assess the specifics of his subtly shifting sound and analyze […]

Sach O got over with help from your mother. It’s been an interesting decade for The Roots. Opening the aught’s with a Grammy and critical cache, their “real Hip-Hop” salvo was ironically taken up by far more cultural outsiders than real Hip-Hop heads. After zigging too far left on the alienating Phrenology and zagging right […]

It’s easy to make fun of The Roots because they’re the house band for Jimmy Fallon and they work with Joanna Newsom, and they probably bonded with the Monsters of Folk over their mutual love of Kombucha, but it’s important to keep in mind that they are capable of doing stuff like this at any […]