Things Fall Apart

Things Fall Apart- The Roots

Things Fall Apart, released in 1999, borrowed it's title from a work of literature by Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian author. Things Fall Apart the novel was published in 1959, a year before Nigeria gained it's independence, with the intent of telling the history of Africa from a native's perspective rather than from a colonizer's perspective, as all of the literature regarding Africa that preceded Achebe's work did just that. Joseph McLaren wrote an essay on the novel suggesting that the purpose of Achebe writing from a native's perspective was to use literature as a way to fight the western world's stereotypes of African natives.

Things Fall Apart was an appropriate name for the album because it recounts Black music history through the diverse music qualities mixed into each track- jazz, beep boxing, and beats that reflect "just about every classic hip-hop beat, from 'Planet Rock' to 'Scenario,'" as Ben Landy says in his review of the album, published in The Yale Herald, while reaching out to the white audience, displayed in The Root's shout out to "'coffee shop chicks and white dudes' in Common," as Allmusic.com's review of the album points out, similar to what Achebe did in attempting to recount African History in a manner that would reach the western world.

The album references black history in America. For example, in the first verse of Adrenaline, The Roots make two references to types of abuse suffered by blacks in the United States. The first is a reference to the slave trade that african americans suffered from up to a century before the publication of this song.

Sells a squads off like a slave auction

In this context, a black man is saying he is the master who is selling and earning at a slave auction, meaning that racism still exists, but he has learned how to turn it around and capitalize off of it. The second is a reference to an act of racism that lead to the death of James Bryd, Jr. in Beaumont, Texas, in 1998, just eight months prior to the publication of this album. Bryd was dragged for about a mile down an asphalt rode by three white supremacists and died about a half way into the dragging, despite being unconscious for most of the dragging before his death.

You don't want no more son? That's when more come
And drag a nigga Erie Avenue to Oregon, you're all done

If you can't handle the reality of racism and turn away from and ignore it, like many people chose to do, "that's when more come" and it starts spreading, from Beaumont to Philadelphia, as Errie and Oregon are both in Philadelphia. Things Fall Apart is filled with explinations of why hip hop is adventageous to the black community. For example, The Next Movement starts off with the lyrics:

That's how we usually start, once again it's the Thought
The Dalai Lama of the mic, the prime minister Thought
This directed to whoever in listening range
Yo the whole state of things in the world bout to changeBlack rain fallin from the sky look strange
The ghetto is red hot, we steppin on flames
Yo, it's inflation on the price for fame
And it was all the same, but then the antidote came

These lyrics state that the world is about to change as black rain falls from the sky, or as African Americans are taking the world by storm thanks to the antidote, hip hop, that is thought equivalent to that of the thoughts of The Dalai Lama. In Act Too, Black thought reflects on Hip Hop's impact on him growing up:

Learnin' the ropes of ghetto survival
Peepin' out the situation I had to slide through
Had to watch my back, my front, plus my sides too
When it came to gettin' mine I ain't tryin, to argue
Sometimes I wouldn'ta made it if it wasn't for you
Hip-hop, you the love of my life and that's true

Additionally, the album is full of religious shout-outs. In The Spark, Malik B says, "I'm symbolic to a ballot, it's Abdul Malik." Abdul Malik means servant to God in Islamic. The Roots mention again and again that "it's all about worship" in several of the tracks on the album, including The Spark and Table of Contents, when Malik B says, "My religion is a way of life." In addition to being revolutionary to The Roots as it was their first record to sell over 500,000 copies and thus was a landmark in their career as a group, Things Fall Apart is multifaceted in it's complexity in both lyrics and musical style. Referencing a groundbreaking novel in the African community that recounts African history, the album recounts history and how hip hop has shaped African American history in the United States. The album makes countless political and religious references. The album also reached a new audience for the group, the white teenagers who had the ability to make or break a group as they were who mainstream music was marketed towards since they had the cash to spend on records.  However, according the Allmusic.com's review of the album, it also caused a decline in their previous audience. Therefore, the album was seen as a "sell-out" to many of their followers, aimed more towards meeting the demands of the market than being true and real as artists.