Roots’ Material Runs Deep

Rap may be at its commercial peak these days, but there’s a large contingent of rap artists and fans alike who aren’t celebrating--and the Roots are at the forefront of that contingent.

On “Things Fall Apart,” the Philadelphia group’s fourth album, the Roots criticize what they believe is a shallow and redundant approach that many rappers adopt in hopes of maximizing sales.

The album, due Feb. 23 from MCA Records, takes its title from a novel by Nigeria’s Chinua Achebe about colonizers who destroy an African community by imposing their culture on it. A parallel is drawn on the Roots’ album; this time the colonizers are corporate money and bottom lines, which cripple hip-hop’s creative growth.

The album, whose attacks are subtle and interspersed with more typical rap numbers, will be marketed with five covers, each one a photograph of a traumatic image, including the bombing of Hiroshima and famine.

Though the album attacks atrocities on a worldwide scale, “You Got Me,” the first single, which also features Erykah Badu, is a dialogue between lovers coping with the pressures of a long-distance relationship.

Unlike many modern rap songs, “You Got Me” has rappers displaying emotional depth. Absent are the lavish lyrics trumpeting a one-dimensional glutton with an elaborate wardrobe and disposable cars.

For the Roots, the tune is nothing revolutionary. Still, they realize that very few other artists of their stature would release a song like “You Got Me.”

“[Other rappers] are afraid to stray away from what is the standard formula,” said Black Thought, the Roots’ lead rapper. “There’s an approach to music right now that is strictly drab.”

?uestlove, the group’s drummer, added that the sameness of modern hip-hop has displaced much of the personality and daring that marked the music’s early recordings.

“As each year goes by, every aspect of the human touch somehow escapes the music,” he said. “That goes in all areas, not just the obvious areas of using computers instead of musicians. After [Dr. Dre’s gangster rap landmark album] ‘The Chronic,’ it became sort of an out thing to show a vulnerable side of hip-hop.”

The Roots’ most damning commentary about what they see as hip-hop’s disarray is on “Act Too (The Love of My Life),” which also features rapper Common, whose solo albums challenge the status quo in rap. In it, Black Thought and Common lament the lack of support their live shows receive from African Americans as they detail how they’ve each espoused the music and remain faithful to it despite its current problems.

“Very few people are in this for the artistic haul,” ?uestlove said. “Hip-hop is almost a means of survival, more or less as a means of luxury, therapy and expression. What made us in the position to make this record the way we did was that almost like a ‘Star Wars’ type of movement came over us. Our equivalent of ‘Use the force’ is ‘Just do what you know.’ ”

The Roots have been using the force since 1992, and their work includes two critically acclaimed but largely overlooked records on Geffen. Rather than rely chiefly on samples, the Roots are a true live band, and critics have been wowed for years not only by the free-flowing narrative delivered by nimble rappers Black Thought and Malik B. but also by the other musicians’ playing.

One difference on the new Roots album is a more universal tone to Black Thought’s raps.

“It was a conscious effort for me to simplify some of the things I was saying,” Black Thought said. “I was getting from a lot of people that they really like the music and they really feel the rhythm of what I was saying, but they really couldn’t understand a lot of my lyrics. I was kicking rhymes that were for MCs, so to speak.”

That’s not to say Black Thought’s words are any less potent; they’re just more accessible.

It’s a move that fits in perfectly with the mood of the Roots’ new album.

“We’re like the blue-collar musicians holding up the mirror to the world like, ‘This is you. Take a look at it,’ ” he said.

“You’ve got to say something, but you don’t want to beat people over the head,” ?uestlove added. “Sometimes you have to sneak it in on ‘em. I think we sort of slipped people a mickey.”

DRE’S DUE: It’s been nearly seven years since Dr. Dre’s landmark debut album “The Chronic” made Death Row Records, Snoop Dogg and Long Beach household names in rap--and cemented Dre’s reputation as the best producer ever in the hip-hop genre.

That’s an eternity in the fast-paced rap world, and Dre, who has been relatively quiet since starting his own Aftermath Records label in 1996, knows it’s time to reestablish his game.

And it looks as if he’s about ready to test himself. He’s preparing an album that he predicts will again set a new standard for rap, just as “The Chronic” did. Tentative guests on the sample-free album, titled “Chronic 2000” and due in the summer, include Ice Cube, his old partner in N.W.A, as well as Snoop, OutKast, Ol’ Dirty Bastard and Eminem, the outstanding young rapper whose own album on Aftermath (in association with Interscope) hits the stores Feb. 23.

“I could have put a lot of records out just to make some money,” Dre said, explaining his low profile. “But I’m trying to create a new thing, and it doesn’t happen overnight. Plus, there were a lot of people out there that were real hot.

“I wanted to let that simmer down for a minute, and then just hit them with this new [stuff] that I’ve got coming.”

Dre, who directed several of his own videos as well as Snoop Dogg’s short movie “Murder Was the Case,” hopes to graduate to directing feature films, scoring movies and handling soundtracks. He’s now working on a script based on his life in the music industry.

Nonetheless, reestablishing himself as hip-hop’s most important producer remains his focus. He has even temporarily shut down Aftermath, which he started after severing ties with Death Row, while he works on “Chronic 2000” and other projects.

“I think a lot of people out there on the street are like, ‘OK, well, Dre fell off,’ ” he said. “But I’ve been through this same situation before with the doubters when I left Ruthless [N.W.A’s label]. Right before I did ‘The Chronic,’ everybody was saying the same [thing]. It really doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s just motivation.”