Release Date: 7/13/2004
Format: Album
UPC: 602498623763
TRACKLISTING
1.
Star/Pointro 7:36
2.
I Don't Care 4:02
3.
Don't Say Nuthin' 3:35
4.
Guns Are Drawn 5:15
5.
Stay Cool 3:34
6.
Web 3:16
7.
Boom! 2:58
8.
Somebody's Got To Do It 4:08
9.
Duck Down! 3:56
10.
Why (What's Going On?) 16:40
REVIEWS
Blender Magazine 50 CDs of 2004
12/3/2004
Check out Blender Magazine as The Roots make the list for the 100 Best Songs of 2004 (#44 "Don't Say Nuthin'") as well as making the list for the 50 Greatest CDs of 2004 (#42 The Tipping Point).
The Tipping Point is named after the Malcolm Gladwell book of the same name. The album cover features the photo of then street thug Malcolm Little which symbolizes his tipping point that leads to his transformation to Malcolm X. The Roots are: ?uestlove (drums) Black Thought (emcee) Kamal Gray (keyboards) Leonard “Hub” Hubbard (bass) and guest musicians Captain Kirk Douglas (guitar) and Frank Knuckles (percussion).
...quotes“Producing entertaining music with a message is one of Hip-Hop’s greatest challenges...but The Roots manage to pull it off. Tariq ‘Black Thought’ Trotter delivers some of the best work of his underrated career.” - The Source ... 4/5 mics
“The Roots have learned how to take hip-hop to the edge of creativity without going over it.” -XXL
"The Tippig Point is an instant classic.” - Esquire
“MC Black Thought has never been more lyrically dexterous, channeling his rage about the state of hip-hop, U.S. politics, and general apathy into some of the most ferociously exciting rhymes to drip from his lips since 1996’s Illadelph Halflife.” Interview agazine
“The new disc has the free-flowing feel of an extended improv at a cool after-hours joint.” People Magazine
“Sometimes greatness is as simple as understanding what to do best. That is the secret of the Roots’ new album, a collection of nuts ‘n’ bolts hip hop that is selective in its samples, compelling in its sicianship and smart in its socially conscious lyrics.” - NY Post
"The Tipping Point's stripped-down simplicity gives its music and messages a raw energy. That's typical of The Roots. Repetition has never been in their expansive vocabulary. Too bad more hip-hop acts don't see that as an antidote to mediocrity." - USA Today ... 4/4
In this month’s cover story in URB magazine, Black Thought gives unprecedented access to his personal life by discussing the magic death of his parents. He says, “maybe the fact that my parents aren’t here in the physical sense is kinda payin’ for me to be able to do what I’m doin’ now. I feel like everything else is cake...”
Associated Press
7/14/2004
Always expect the unexpected from the Roots. On their genre-expanding 2002 album "Phrenology," the Philadelphia hip-hop band flirted with punk, downshifted neo-soul into a drum n' bass workout, and imagined their guitar-riffing hip-hop as rock 'n' roll's offspring. The disc was heady, ambitious and undeniably progressive.
Now on "The Tipping Point," instead of further tinkering with song structure and metaphor, they've opted to make their sound more accessible. Down to a streamlined, 10-song CD (actually, there are two hidden tracks, one with a hook courtesy of comic Dave Chappelle), the new disc borrows from the past, eyes the future yet manages to remain some of today's most vital hip-hop.
More than any past release, the disc showcases the nimble rhymes of frontman Black Thought. He displays a socially aware side, dropping a couplet about the Patriot Act on the reggae-tinged "Guns Are Drawn" and societal ills on "Why (What's Goin' On?)."
In a homage to old school rap, Thought races through uncanny imitations of classic Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap verses on "Boom" - but only after he drops his own barrage of boasts on "Break Beat."
However, for all the lyrical fury, the music is as funky as ever. Great sample choices propel two of the disc's best moments - Sly and the Family Stone's "Everybody is a Star" gets poached on the disc-opening "Star" while "Stay Cool" extends the same beguiling Al Hirt snippet used on De La Soul's 1993 "Ego Trippin' (Part Two)." There's even a hidden version of George Kranz's dance classic "Din Daa Daa." All these treats clock in at under an hour. With "Tipping Point," the Roots prove that less can be indeed much more.
- Brett Johnson, For The Associated Press
Rolling Stone
7/14/2004
The planet's greatest live hip-hop band has a problem. The Roots are staggering under the weight of their own talent and trying to figure out where they fit within the matrix of hip-hop and pop music in general: Are they the public face of the rap underground, or are they reaching for the big time, whatever it takes? Their sixth studio album is calculated to display their range -- buttery pop choruses, hard-as-hell hookless spitting, jittery programmed beats, a bonus jam on George Kranz's club classic "Din Daa Daa" that highlights Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson's drumming -- and it's got a bunch of impressive ideas. The "virtual duet" with Sly and the Family Stone's "Everybody Is a Star," a dubious idea on paper, works out beautifully; instead of rapping over the original song or lifting its chorus, the Roots loosen it up and restructure it into a conversation between Black Thought's flow and the Family Stone's individual interjections.
The downside to The Tipping Point's chameleonic variety is that the Roots too rarely sound like themselves, or even like a collective. Black Thought can channel seemingly any style from hip-hop's history (on the high-speed, old-schoolish "Boom," he pulls off a killer Big Daddy Kane impression), but he rarely has a great moment that's all his own, and there's not much here with the pure emotional power of "You Got Me" or "The Seed (2.0)" -- both of which featured guest singers, not coincidentally. The album's best hook belongs to "Don't Say Nuthin," and it's a novelty: The chorus's gangsta drawl is pushed so far that it's totally unintelligible. Black Thought rises to its challenge with a zinger: "Ain't nothing like the rush I get in front of the band/Onstage with the planet in the palm of my hand." Well, exactly -- and it's strange to hear a group that's made so much of its liver-than-live rhythm section hold it in check so often.
