DeLaWho? DeLaWhat? DeLaWhere?

"Hear" it is Eddie. As I said, I went to OWU for a Roots Concert on Saturday night. The concert was downright amazing. This was my third time seeing them and it was the worst concert - soundwise- of theirs that I have seen. However, it was their most impressive concert because it was held in their "Physical Education" Center (cause Gynasium is way too high school)(Shown to the left). Notice that the gym consists of a dozen or so dome-like structures. Inside the gym, the ceiling was curved. This curved ceiling provided interesting...well, terrible acoustics. Sounds would reflect back onto stage causing this weird echo effect. The opening act was a new soul/rock/blues/r&b artist Van Hunt. People try to compare him to D'angelo or maybe even Saadiq, cody chestnutt, or maybe even Maxwell. But, he is in his own music genre. When he came on stage not many of the OWU drunkards had shown up, so it was relatively calm. I really enjoyed his 30 minute set. He has an amazing voice. It was actually pretty funny because he is originally from Dayton, so his family including his family made the trip down to OWU for the concert. SIDE NOTE: take a listen to some of his stuff Anything, Highlights...I could go on but just check out his website.

Back to the concert, Blackalicious was the next act to come on. I was a little disappointed. I have heard that they are pretty good live. But, with a combination of muffled instrumentals and indiscernable lyrics, the performance was poor. Gift of Gab, who raps pretty fast, would start getting excited mid-rap and would begin to make no sense at all.

The Roots are one of the premier acts in all of music right now. They are progressive musicians who tour yearlong. They tour like they used to back in the day (i really have no clue). It doesnt matter if they are promoting an album or if they are just out there for the sake of touring and playing music. They provide an outrageous amount of energy on stage and play to the crowd with entertaining solos. On saturday, they made up for the terrible acoustics with an energy once unknown to man. Recently they lost their lead guitarist, Ben, to Incubus. Ben was replaced by Martin Luther and Kirk Douglas. His replacements were outrageously amazing. Incubus' gain was also the Roots gain. Martin Luther has an amazingly soulful voice to go along with his skills on the strings and Kirk Douglas was his equal if not superior on the guitar. His solo was amazing. The Roots ended up playing some new stuff from their album. The new stuff was pretty good, but I couldnt really tell because again the acoustics were so terrible. The terrible acoustics were really evident when they played a song called Quills off their most recent album. In the sequence of the song, the entire band stops-pauses-then starts back up. In a hip-hop song it has the effect of a record stopping. There is usually a moment of pure silence that sounds like music genius as the next sequence begins. It has an amazing effect live. However, the acoustics as they were muffled the moment of silence which makes the song. However, the Roots were able to overcome the sound problems to come through strong.

Towards the end of their concert, they go through a sequence of solos. Hub, the bassist, jammed out and then they transitioned into Rapper's Delight, then, the guitarists had their solos, then ?uestlove and Knuckles had a "Duolo" of sorts. They played on the same drum set, speeding up---slowing down in unison. Their solo went perfectly until the last moment when they finished raised their sticks to bang once more on the snares and cymbals. There was supposed to be about half a bars worth of silence until the last notes. Knuckles got a little excited and came down to early. He realized his mistake and he and questlove hit the drums in unison at the desired time. Knuckles took it in stride with a big smile and shared a laugh with ?uest. It was cool to see that happen cause their "Duolo" was so flawless.

The Roots are always good for some misc. stuff. Here are some of them in list form:
-During "You got me" which usually features Erykah Badu, ?uest and knuckles silently introduced the beat of J'Kwon's "Tipsy" which is also the beat for The Clipse's "Grindin" and as "you got me" faded out, Martin Luther proclaimed "Errbody get another piece of pizza/Errbody get another piece of pizza" (references tipsy).
-At one point, Black thought started by saying "Im the real rick james bitch. What did 5 fingers say to the face?" He pointed the mic to the crowd as they yelled "SLAP" and then the Roots proceeded to play "Superfreak".
-They also played a little bit of King Tubby. The dub master that I think I have referred to earlier.
-The solos are always filled with some interesting stuff. Usually, they end up covering popular songs. This time they covered, "get low", "damn", "yeah"....basically all the Lil' Jon stuff, and then they did a couple more covers and the show ended.

Exhausting, yet revitalizing at the same time. Thats a Roots concert in a nutshell.