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Falling for Fall Out BoyDid the Roots just trick me into liking a lame emo band?

By Ben Mathis-Lilley
Posted Thursday, April 24, 2008, at 6:54 AM ET
The Roots in concert. Click image to expand.

Casually browsing the music blogs not long ago, I read that the Roots are putting out a new album at the end of this month. Good news, I thought. I like almost all of their previous work and had recently watched them rage through a highly entertaining two-hour show full of new material, so as far as I knew, they still had the spark. To my chagrin, however, I saw that their new single, "Birthday Girl," was a collaboration with Patrick Stump, lead singer of the punk-pop band Fall Out Boy.

Now, I don't really know anything about Fall Out Boy, but I understand that I'm expected not to like them. They wear hair gel, and one of the guys in the band dates Ashlee Simpson, so it's fair to assume that they suck and that their fans are vapid teeny-boppers whose heads would explode if they heard what real rock 'n' roll sounds like. What kind of lame middlebrow loser do the Roots take me for?

The Roots news was disappointing, but not surprising. Top-notch rappers have a history of puzzling collaborations with cheesy rock 'n' rollers. Off the top of my head, I could recall a number of otherwise-respectable rappers who'd worked with middle-of-the-road top-40 types: Kanye West ("Heard 'Em Say" with Maroon 5's Adam Levine, "Homecoming" with Coldplay's Chris Martin), Jay-Z (who released a version of his song "Encore" remixed with instrumentals and vocal tracks from Linkin Park's "Numb"), Dr. Dre (who brought in Gwen Stefani to sing the hook for Eve's "Let Me Blow Your Mind"), and even the Roots themselves, who employed Nelly Furtado on the track "Sacrifice" from their 2002 album Phrenology. (This was in Furtado's nonthreatening songstress days, before she started giving her albums titles like Loose.) Indeed, the release most frequently and hyperbolically cited as the moment hip-hop ascended to commercial viability is Run DMC's 1985 remake of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." While Aerosmith was cool then, they must be retroactively downgraded severely for releasing the love theme to Armageddon.

Why do rappers whose work I hold in such high regard have such terrible taste in rock? The answer started to become clear when I gave "Birthday Girl," the Roots-Patrick Stump song, a courtesy listen and was greatly disturbed to discover that I liked it. It's catchy; Stump has the right voice for the mellow hook, and the Roots' estimable rhythm section gives a sharp edge to what otherwise would have been a straightforward mid-tempo rock song:

Upon searching my soul, I realized that I had to admit that I in fact liked almost all the songs that I named earlier. "Let Me Blow Your Mind" is an unjustly forgotten club grinder; "Homecoming," "Heard 'Em Say," and "Sacrifice" all get stuck in my head from time to time; "Numb/Encore" is a staple of the various Workout Mega-Jam mixes that I've made over the years. I was a bit taken aback; cultural snobbery is such an integral part of my personality. I'd have to rethink a lot of things if it turned out I liked listening to Fall Out Boy, Maroon 5, and Linkin Park.

Fortunately, a quick zip through the iTunes store reassured me that I don't. Those bands have recorded some memorably hummable singles but don't have much musical range and seem to almost purposefully employ instrumentation and vocal effects indistinguishable from all the other bands working in their already well-trod genres. (Fall Out Boy seems the most promising—I could see them making an album I really liked—and while Linkin Park is never going to be my thing, they're not bad at what they do. Maroon 5 is elevator music from the depths of hell.) But these bands' songwriting and production tendencies, I realized, are beside the point. They're not in the studio to write and record a double album with a rapper; they're stopping by for a day to lay down vocals for a single.

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Ben Mathis-Lilley is an editor at New York magazine.
Photograph of The Roots by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images.
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Notes from the Fray Editor

Work on the Fray for an article like this is always slowed down by the huge number of recommendations for good music from readers—checking them out in a spirit of true professionalism does take time. Many of the recos are checkmarked for your ease and comfort—a service we like to provide. The article's author Ben Mathis-Lilley was a welcome visitor to the boards, entering into discussions with several readers. Reality Calls says "rap is the blues for people who can't sing". Faxmebeer gives this "obvious reason" for the collaborations: "Take one part scarey black guy, mix with equal part white frat boy, and you get a whole new market of upper-middle class white kids who otherwise aren't that interested"—and then got into an argument on racism.

Comments from the Fray

Whatever the relative merits of individual rappers, I haven't heard these guys and gals subjected to the kind of criticism rock musicians have taken over the last four decades, and I suspect much of this is a failure of nerve on the part of the critics. Rock bands are judged against a consensus as to what constitutes a good tune; the emphasis changes, of course, but there is a tangible standard that's applied when these guys come up for review…[But] no-one seems willing to dissect the raps beyond the sociology; art seems the last thing on anyone's mind here.

--Ted Burke

(To reply, click here)

Another element of this is the fact that rappers, unlike "indie" artists, want to be popular. There is far less venom from the hip hop community for an artist who makes a huge hit partnering with a pop artist than there would be for an indie artist who did the same. If Radiohead teamed up with Ashley Simpson they would be crucified.

--TJA

(To reply, click here)

The talent is out there, you just have to look for it. I've noticed that all music goes through phases, hot phases, cold phases, check cashing phases. We're just in the check cashing phase right now. The problem is with people who don't stick with it, don't recognize what it was they liked about the music and flee to something reactionary out of spite and irritation.

--Eigenvector

(To reply, click here)

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