Album Drop: The Roots & Al Green

Here are two albums to take up the rotation on your iPod for the next few months.

Rising Down is the latest offering from The Roots and though I really just started listening to them after my buddy Victoria let me hear Things Fall Apart, I've since met ?uestlove and seen the group at Duke's LDOC, where I met Black Thought as well. ?uest has called this "the most incendiary, political album of our career to date. Add up [the crime and high school drop-out rates in Philadelphia], plus being in your mid-30s and working 300 nights a year and this being an election year — yeah, all that’s what this album’s about.” Stand out tracks: Rising Up, 75 Bars, Lost Desire

Rising Down - The Roots
1. The Pow Wow (Intro)
2. Rising Down (f/ Mos Def and Styles P)
3. Get Busy (f/ Dice Raw & Peddi Crack & Jazzy Jeff)
4. @ 15
5. 75 Bars (Reconstruction) (f/ Tuba Gooding Jr.)
6. (Up Theme) Becoming Unwritten (instrumental)
7. Criminal (with Truck North & Saigon)
8. I Will Not Apologize (f/ Porn & Talib Kweli)
9. I Can’t Help It (f/ Malik B & Porn)
10. Singing Man (f/ Porn, Black Thought, & Truck North)
11. (Up Theme) Unwritten (f/ Mercedes Martinez)
12. Lost Desire (f/ Malik B & Talib Kweli)
13. The Show (f/ Common)
14. Rising Up (f/ Wale & Chrissette Michelle)
15. Birthday Girl (f/ Patrick Stump)

DOWNLOAD Rising Down


Continuing with the ?uestlove theme, the man ?uest played career reviver, working with the legend Al Green on his return to his best sound. Said ?uest, "If it were up to me and it was absolutely totalitarianism, I would live all my derivative fantasies out on this record," he says. "It would be 1974 all over again, sonically. I think they're still getting used to that." So Blue Note gave him the power and he returned Green to his legendary groove. Stand out tracks: The whole thing

Lay It Down - Al Green
1. Lay It Down (f/ Anthony Hamilton)
2. Just for Me
3. You've Got the Love I Need (f/ Anthony Hamilton)
4. No One Like You
5. What More Do You Want From Me
6. Take Your Time (f/ Corinne Bailey Rae)
7. Too Much
8. Stay With Me (By The Sea) (f/ John Legend)
9. All I Need
10. I'm Wild About You
11. Standing In The Rain

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