At Edgefield, the Roots Operated Like One Giant Musical Organism

The only small hitch at Edgefield was that they didn’t dig through more of their discography, instead playing what felt like cover after cover.

Black Thought of the Roots performing at Edgefield. IMAGE: Liz Allan.
By Isabel Zacharias

Edgefield usually feels intimate for an amphitheater. There are often shows here where families at the back of the lawn stay seated on their quilts throughout.

But the Roots' show on Sept. 1 was not one of those shows.

"We're gonna take a second now to raise our vibration," frontman Black Thought said to the sold-out crowd, Questlove drumming continuously behind him like a pulse. "Let's just focus on our breathing. Everybody take a full breath in"—every person in Edgefield, I shit you not, breathed in—"aaaaand a full breath out."

Less than 30 minutes into the show, this was a necessary exercise, with everyone already sticky and breathless from dancing. The Roots, once true sons of Philadelphia, have effectively become America's hip-hop collective, ubiquitous in a way that fractured pop culture hardly allows for any more. They sit on three Grammy wins, and they're also the house band on The Tonight Show. And that's to say nothing of their dense, 12-album discography, which swings from radio-friendly singles to literary meditations on the African-American experience.

In fact, the only small hitch at Edgefield was that they didn't dig through more of that discography. Smartly, they drew a healthy chunk of the set from 1999 breakthrough Things Fall Apart. But it mostly felt like cover after cover—"Spottieottiedopalicious," "Move On Up," "Hand Clapping Song" and Cardi B's "Bodak Yellow." It's hard to complain too much, though. After all these years, the rapport between Questlove and Black Thought was like two halves of the same musical organism—man, that shit is magical.

All photos by Liz Allan.

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