The Roots
A Tale of 3 Cities
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Hip hop, though, turns the beat around, submitting the drummer to the discipline of strict time. As reggae singer Winston Shand once sang: “Time is the master, but time can be disaster if you don’t care.” For hip hop the appeal of sampling and looping comes directly out of the funk aesthetic, which makes punctuality its prime virtue; the rhythm team averts disaster by carefully obeying Master Time. Funk’s trajectory into rap looks something like this: in the 60s the J.B.’s and the Meters started to play compulsively repeating riffs so precise and sharp and tireless that they almost felt mechanical. In truth what makes those jackhammer funk rhythms so irresistible is their failed attempt to turn the performer into a machine; the performer’s body provides friction, resistance, and sheer drag, lending the performance that human touch. The funk beat has much in common with military and marching band music: when it’s done right it’s so tight you can bounce a quarter off of it. Sir. With the advent of sampling, the possibility of digitally repeating a rhythm, of subjecting the drummer to the most exacting of disciplinary actions–recording him–galvanized that already present aesthetic. Funk’s mechanization culminated in samples, sequences, and loops–grooves that literally repeated like a broken record. Genius loopzillists like Public Enemy’s production crew, Bomb Squad, let rap listeners revel in the wicked precision of reiterative rhythmic repetition.
Two new records, however, mark the greatest strides yet in the attempt to get the live-band concept to work in a hip hop setting. The second offering, from the Philadelphia-based Roots, Do You Want More?!!!??!, is a brilliant, pared-down live-band jam that satisfies the loopers’ delight in snap-tight bass ‘n’ drum grooves, while providing the more generous, swingish lilt and varied lift only available from breathing bodies. “You are all about to witness some organic hip hop jazz, 100 percent groove, and you don’t stop,” proclaims Malik B. over Scott Storch’s 70s soul jazz keyboards at the outset of the disc. On “Distortion to Static” drummer B.R.O.THER? is credited with playing “human SP-1200 (no sample!)” and his drum-kit imitation of a sampler is indeed uncanny; in places, like the middle of “Mellow My Man,” he and acoustic bassist HUB break into a full-fledged straight-ahead jazz rhythm.
A decade ago a drummer told me that drum machines had changed the basic requirements of studio drummers; producers wanted increasingly exact beats. As the Roots and Metrics confirm, we’ve now passed another important aesthetic transformation in which the sound of digital sampling technology has created a whole new set of ideas for live musicians. It’s an aesthetic that draws on both the spunk of live funk and the most unthinkable concoctions of digital samplers. But don’t be fooled: it still ain’t jazz.
