Day 0944 - Phrenology

The Roots “Phrenology” (2002) – got it

Considering the Roots now have a prolific discography and are prominent as the house band for 'the Late Show with Jimmy Fallon', they had relatively humble beginnings.  Drummer ?uestlove and rapper Black Thought would busk on the street with ?uest playing on buckets.   The group kept a reasonably organic sound as they developed into their first recordings, playing with live musicians and mixing jazz sounds into their backing tracks.

Over their first few albums their line-up changed a bit.  They experimented with some different genres, and formed the Soulquarians collective which (as previously mentioned) also worked on albums by Erykah Badu and Common.

Their fifth album 'Phrenology' is bursting with music, from the brief explosion of hardcore in "!!!!!!!", the funky soul of "The Seed (2.0)", the jazz-backed rap of "Something in the Way of Things".    There's the Epic track “Water” which swings from hiphop to a run through what almost sounds like an Ennio Morricone score and an almost avant outro.

The closing song hidden in the tracklisting as an untitled track and mixes hip-hop in with electronica.   Basically these guys can touch upon any area of music they like and it seems to work.

Really need to check out some more of their stuff, I kind of lost track of them after the following album "The Tipping Point".