The Roots - Organix (1993)

I had a major "OH FUCK!" when "The Anti-Circle" kicked in and I realized that the shitty Tom Green album I had years ago, which contained "Write Rhymes and Act Like an Asshole" sampled the bassline to the track.. Or at least, I think it does. I don't know, it feels emotionally straining to even just admit that I had a Tom Green hip-hop album.

Some years back, a girl I knew's sister came home with her new boyfriend, who had just bought a guitar, and he asked the girl "Guess what? I'm starting a band! You'll never guess what genre we're gonna do" and the girl asked "I don't know, rap?" and later recalled the conversation to me, with the punchline being "get it? rap doesn't have REAL instruments" and I wanted to throw her out of the fucking window, due to The Roots and Beastie Boys existing. There are a few Beastie Boys albums that would've blown her away, but I never really listened to The Roots much, so this is actually my first album by them, despite having acknowledged Black Thought as one of the GOATs from the many features I've heard from him on other people's albums.. But this isn't that great. I feel like the drums (provided by the excellent Questlove) are a lot more entertaining than the rapping on this album, partly in due to how the album is mixed, with the drums being front-and-center and louder than everything else, so I frequently find myself having to force myself to pay attention to the rapping, and only the rapping, because I don't think even the instrumentals are that interesting, just the sound of an actual live drummer on a hip-hop album, but even past that, the song structures feel a bit muddy and unfinished, like "oh, fuck, we didn't write an ending for this song, just repeat the chorus for a minute" as the band jams a bit. Ah, they've got like a million other albums to -hopefully- win me over.

6/10
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