THINGS FALL APART, NOW WHAT?

All this year, I’ve been feeling nostalgic. Last year, one of the many artists of my heart, D’Angelo, passed away. This is relevant because that would make him the third member of the core Soulquarians gone, two out of the three of its founders deceased, and marking what feels like the lasting light of an era fading out.

Nostalgia is dangerous to a millennial, as so much of our relationship to hope is precarious at best and abysmal at base level. We lived through the war on drugs, a global pandemic, predictable campaign results no matter the party, regular attacks on our inalienable rights, and most notably a housing crisis so generationally devastating many of us may not be property owners in our lifetime. At the center of such strife, in the space where the personal and the collective blur, music offers common language. Though here, Black Thought would say, “Y’all not saying nothin’ new.” The generational reach of his punchy, high-energy lyrics from ‘99 has not only carried the social anxiety of a generation looking both forwards and back, but also holds a mirror to us today. Before The Roots brings us Endgame, Things Fall Apart is still offering me multiple ways to brace myself for the future.

Largely regarded as the collective’s magnum opus, Things Fall Apart lands at multiple intersections–an indictment of power and its vast, destructive reach while also standing as both a historical marker and love letter to hip-hop. The album pulls its title from Achebe’s book of the same name. What I believe is less known are the parallels working throughout the album between the book’s premise and where The Roots were in their career in leading up to their fourth studio album.

There was the East and West Coast struggle for dominance resulting in death for both coasts–Pac and Biggie were killed and only became larger afterlife. Southern rap was on the verge of its reign, and while Neo-soul had its steady and loyal fanbase, functionally rebelled against commercialism and therefore found itself at odds with mainstream media and its rigid marketing tactics. Standing on these crossroads, the pressure to craft a genre-bending album ends up working in the collective’s favor. By naming the album after Achebe’s book, rappers such as Talib Kweli, Common, are paralleled to Okonkwo and his resistance against colonial forces (read: the East / West rap dominance). In Achebe’s novel, Okonkwo leads his tribe into battle against the European forces. Despite his cunning and the reverence of his peers, he was unable to defeat the invaders resulting in surrender. In this way, both the album and the novel serve as lyrical warfare.

Things Fall Apart features warbling synchs, lyrics packed with double and triple entendres, ranging from easeful and diligent to charming and erratic drum kits, to samples looped through and looped through again, what The Roots have made makes me feel, oddly, hopeful. I was nine when The Roots gave me an artistic road map for where to go next when it seems, otherwise, language fails to meet the moment. So often Black artists are tasked with the burden of meeting the moment, the collective anxiety, and while Things Fall Apart achieves that, it reminds me good art, art that is meant to last generations & gift each one with a new lesson, will rarely hold your hand.