It was a night of legends this past weekend (2/22) in Harlem, New York. The Legendary Roots Crew performed live at the Apollo Theater, capping off Heineken’s New Legend Concert Series.
Sporting a brown sweater with some blue jeans and a baseball cap, Black Thought jumped on stage with a non-stop onslaught of lyrics. The crowd, consisting mostly of back packers, stood silently as they followed Thought’s watertight flow while bopping their heads to the band’s flawless sound. The crew went on to perform the music that made them household names; such songs included “Proceed,” “You Got Me,” and followed things up with the more recent “In the Music”.
After rocking the crowd for a while, the tunes suddenly stopped. Black Thought then stated, “If you feel it’s your civic duty to keep Hip-Hop alive, make some noise.” After the crowd’s overwhelming consent, the band went into an instrumental play of Nas’s “Hip-Hop Is Dead.”
This marked the direction for the next part of the show which was dedicated to displaying love to their fellow Hip-Hop peers. The band went into a rendition of Jay-Z’s “Roc Boys” on which they added a political spin to the opening line when Black Thought added, “And the winner is, Obama.”
The Roots showed love across the map with other artist renditions. They took it to the west with a little Snoop Dogg, then down to the south with “Snap Yo Fingers,” and back to the east with a little bit of Wu-Tang.
Later on, band members ?uestlove, Captain Kirk (guitar) and Damon Bryson a.k.a Tuba Gooding, Jr. (sousaphones) went on to perform Bob Dylan’s classic “Masters of War,” which was as ?uestlove stated, “A middle finger to the government.”
?uestlove was at the top of his game with exceptional play of the drums. He definitely went hard and took it to another level when he began playing the drums with his hair pick. The crowd was definitely feeling the performance as one audience member was heard saying, “Bring the troops home.” Captain Kirk and Tuba, feeding off the crowd’s reaction, jumped off stage and ran up and down the aisles rocking with audience members.
As the red velvet curtains came down, audience members scurried around attempting to catch a pair of autographed drumsticks being tossed in the air by ?uestlove. For those who weren’t fortunate enough to catch a piece of memorabilia, the memory of the amazing performance by The Roots was one which will surely last a lifetime.