Embracing change

Onstage, The Roots are a whirlwind of energy. The members of the veteran hip-hop group march back and forth, chase each other around, intersperse their songs with blasting covers of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song and Kool & The Gang's Jungle Boogie and jump into the crowd while still playing their instruments. You'd never guess that middle age was weighing on their minds.

'It's a very risky thing to embrace elder statesmanship in such a youth-obsessed culture.' — Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, drummer for The Roots

And yet the overarching theme of the band's ninth studio album, How I Got Over, is how to face a turning point in life.

"It's a very risky thing to embrace elder statesmanship in such a youth-obsessed culture," says drummer, producer and band spokesman Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, who founded the group with Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter in the late '80s. There's nary a grey hair in ?uestlove's mushroom-cloud afro (into which he stuffed a world record 101 afro picks last year), and he's always ready with an offbeat quip. But at 39, he's taking stock of his life. Lounging in the Toronto Jazz Festival's media tent prior to a sold-out show, he ruminates on the personal significance of the album's title.

Through some recent "Facebook investigation," ?uestlove concluded that out of 27 childhood friends in the two Philadelphia neighbourhoods where he grew up, only three are alive and not imprisoned. And he's one of them.

"I have a lot of 'Why me?' questions," he says. These have led him to reflect on the band's younger collaborators – having been around for so long, The Roots are now working with artists that they first knew as children. ?uestlove and Black Thought have known Truck North, the first rapper to be heard on How I Got Over, since he was 10, and producer and frequent collaborator Khari (Ferrari) Mateen since he was eight.

"They'd always be there, and I guess eventually after you see them for three, four years, you start to give in and teach them a few things, and then they gravitate to [those lessons], and now they're world-class musicians. Now I tend to think, was that the turning point in their life? What [would have] happened if I did kick Khari out for spilling fruit punch on my X-Box? Would he have been a delinquent by 12, and could he have been a murderer at 18?"

In the new album's lyrics, Black Thought and various guest MCs try to move from soul-searching questioning to resolve. The pleading hook in Now or Never puts forth this objective: "Everything's changing around me / And I want to change too … I'mma get my shit together / It's now or never." The references to change invoke Barack Obama's presidential campaign; while How I Got Over was at first rumoured to be inspired by the Democratic victory in the U.S., The Roots delayed the release in part so they could come to terms with the election's aftermath.

As ?uestlove, who DJ'ed an Obama victory party in New York in 2008, recalls, "We were apprehensive: we didn't want to jump the gun and get caught up in November madness. People were running in the streets, hugging each other; I just stood on the corner and watched. It was like the friendliest riot ever, for two straight weeks.… And then I started realizing that [people] were not really as politically in tune as I would have hoped. I started asking myself, 'OK, what's going to happen once they realize that this is a hierarchy, not a kingdom? A lot of people made their political decisions based on a Saturday Night Live sketch; how are they going to feel six months from now, once they realize that one man can't clean up a dirty-ass frat house with just some buckets and some sponges? Will they blame him for not moving quick enough?' I wanted to hold back to see what was going to happen, and sure enough, we called it. I feel that it was wiser to make a personal record than a hasty political Band-Aid album."

How I Got Over does express some hope, as reflected in its gospel-tinged production; it certainly sounds brighter than its coruscating, end-of-Bush-era predecessor, Rising Down (2008). The new disc was recorded in the band's dressing room on the Jimmy Fallon Show — The Roots have been the talk show host's house band since his debut in March 2009. How I Got Over is the first Roots album since their 1993 debut, Organix, on which the musicians recorded together as a band.

Being on Fallon's show exposed The Roots to a number of indie/alternative bands, some of whose members appear as guests on How I Got Over. Jim James from Monsters of Folk sings the plaintive hook on Dear God 2.0; members of Dirty Projectors sing on the album's wordless introduction, A Peace of Light; and strangest of all, Pitchfork darling Joanna Newsom delivers the unearthly hook for Right On (adapted from her own song The Book of Right On).

"I'm pretty certain that fans of those three [bands] will be mildly curious to see what we're about," says ?uestlove.

The Roots may not be overwhelmingly popular, but their longevity, combined with their stylistic variance – their Toronto gig included Afrobeat, reggae, James Brown-style funk and blues rock – mark them as pleasers of many different types of crowds. Over their career, says ?uestlove, they've "collected very small amounts of different demographics," including fans of poetry and jazz, of jam bands, of freestyle rap (Black Thought being a past master) and now, watchers of the Fallon Show, who have started calling out requests at gigs for segments like Slow Jam the News.

Acquiring such diverse fan bases is difficult — keeping them, even tougher. The Roots have managed the difficult transition from early exuberance to maturity with panache. How I Got Over is thoughtful but never boring – ?uestlove's hard-hitting drums, the virtuoso rapping and innovative production (Hustla features an AutoTuned baby courtesy of M.I.A. collaborator Diplo ) ensure it's consistently ear-opening.

"To hear the feedback [from the album], there are a lot of people out there like us," says ?uestlove. "They say, 'Wow, I really feel maturity on this record. I'm proud to be 40! It didn't seem cool before.' I think we found something."

How I Got Over is in stores now. The Roots play the Montreal Jazz Festival on June 30.

Mike Doherty is a writer based in Toronto.