Still on the late, late-night grind when this album dropped in late 2010, the Roots had not yet found the household-name TV star status they’ve since enjoyed. Much as they had ended the ’90s stating their undeniable importance to hip hop with Things Fall Apart, the Roots here began a new decade of quality output with a razor-sharp paean to the ghetto, under a title prophetic to their approaching pop-culture fame in a new medium. Their unconventional approach to sonic structure in the genre, coupled with the still-untouchable pen game of rapper Black Thought, convened to give the rap world a blues record that pushed the boundaries of what both a band and a hip hop collective could truly be.
