The Roots Picnic

Yesterday's Roots Picnic was quite an experience. A hip-hop festival at its roots, (that was preconceived) it also featured sets from non hip-hop acts like Tune-Yards, Mayer Hawthorne, and Vampire Weekend. This produced the most diverse crowd of humans I've seen since the last time I was at Philly International. Shit was like an airport. Hair gel-ed heads, dreadlocked heads, bald heads, heads with quirky hats, turbaned heads (just one) and even some salt and pepper heads were there. There was also an incredibly large number of white boys wearing old basketball jerseys. Really annoying. I saw one kid with a Larry Johnson Hornets jersey and it was like "Oh, cool!" Then I saw another kid with a Grant Hill Pistons jersey circa 2000 or so and it was like "Wow, another outdated NBA jersey." By the time I saw a dude in a Darius Miles Clippers jersey it was like "Go stick your head in one of those Mr. Johns, pluhhhese."

Anyways, here are my thoughts on some of the acts:

The first band we saw was Bajah and the Dry Eye Crew. They opened by saying some crap about how we were all going to Africa, but most of their songs sounded like old school R&B. The only difference between them and James Brown was that James Brown didn't have an African accent.

Tune-yards came on next. I was familiar with her material and enjoyed her tragically short live set. She only got about twenty minutes, and she was sort of winning over the initially perplexed crowd when she had to take a bow. Bummer.

Now it was four o'clock, and I was falling asleep on my feet. I was too tired to even want to talk to anyone. Thankfully, The Very Best came out and delivered a delicious dose of sugary afro-electropop that made me dance around like a fifteen year old. They even stole the beat from Yeasayer's "Ambling Alp" and put some lyrics on it. My only complaint was that Ezra Koenig, who sings on "Warm Heart of Africa," was standing ON THE SIDE OF THE STAGE WATCHING as they performed the song using a pre-recorded version of his vocals. Get your butt out there, sir.

By this point it was about five o'clock or so and we were sun-drenched and tired of standing. We went inside and sat indian style and talked about how hot it was. Then we went outside and caught some of Jay Electronica's set. He rambled on stage a bit too much, but his beats were good and he seemed to use a lot of big words. I like it when rappers use big words instead of talking about "bitchez."

Mayer Hawthorne was next, and seemed to be a very polarizing figure. Many people left during his set. I like his music, so I danced around like a fifteen year old. He covered "Mr. Blue Sky" by ELO, and ended with a rousing rendition of "The Ills."

I'm having a hard time recalling what happened after that. I think we stood around and then the Roots came on. Their show was tremendous. They had a massive band and produced a massive sound. There was the guy with the tuba. And the guitar hero. And the bass virtuoso. And there was Questlove, who was fun to watch because his Afro was flopping around when he was drumming. The only thing I didn't like about their set was that they kept stopping in the middle of songs like they were playing freeze tag. Real annoying. They were at their best when John Legend came out for the last few songs. I've always sort of dismissed John Legend as being a poptart, but he proved me wrong. I think they should form a band with him as their lead singer and reinvent Marvin Gaye.

Then three members of the Wu-Tang Clan (Ghostface, Raekwon, and Method Man) came out and yelled a lot, much to the crowd's approval. The only songs I recognized were "Method Man" and "C.R.E.A.M." because life's too short to listen to every damn album a member or combination of members of Wu-Tang put out. A lot of white people made their hands into the letter W, and a lot of black people snickered. I would've snickered if I were black. Real rap. Then Black Thought was like "Vampire Weekend is coming on next" and some people cheered and the hip-hop fans left and went to the little ass tent to see The Clipse.

It really cleared out at this point, so we were able to get pretty close to the stage for Vampire Weekend, the reason I bought tickets to this event in the first place. The crowd was either really tired or didn't even like Vampire Weekend because not many people were singing along or dancing around. Lizzy and I were though, so it was still fun. Waaay fun. Worth standing around in the sun for nine hours fun.

I'd do it again.