The major-label debut album of what would later become one of the most acclaimed hip-hop groups of all-time. After their independently released first album which got somewhat mixed reviews among critics, the band decided to come back with a follow-up that will totally outshine it’s predecessor. “Do You Want More?!!!??! ” picks up where their first album, “Organix” left off, by keeping a similar sound and even following the tracklist as if the two albums were in fact, just one 33 song album. Even with what I just said, “Do You Want More?!!!??!” is still a full album and you don’t absolutely have to listen to “Organix” before listening to it.

We have here a young version of The Roots, before “Illadelph Halflife”, before “Things Fall Apart”, before “Phrenoloy” and before Jimmy Fallon. When The Roots were still a fresh new group with a relatively small (but quickly growing) fan base that just got picked up by a major label with a heavily jazz influenced sound. Black Thought was at the time of recording about 22 years-old and you can clearly see a difference between the relatively inexperienced rapper we have here and what is today one of hip-hop’s finest MC’s. Although he’s inexperienced, he still is very talented and already displayed the qualities that make him the great MC he is today. His voice is also much lighter than it is today which was a bit surprising for me since I was far more familiar with his later works, but I still enjoyed it a lot.

This album is also notable because of it’s great jazz-influenced production. ?uestlove was already a pretty skilled drummer and the whole production team, The Grand Negaz, made this album a classic and one of the best hip-hop albums of the 90’s. Also the whole team got some help from legendary beatboxer Rahzel who appears on a few tracks and even has his own track with ?uestlove named “? vs Rahzel”. At the time Malik B. was also in the group, who is on most songs with Black Thought and Dice Raw although he is only featured on the song “The Lesson Part. 1″.

My only criticism about this album would probably be the length, it’s nearly an 75 minutes long, but luckily there’s barely any filler and there are some really strong songs like my personal favorite “Silent Treatment” a song which contains the essence of pure soulful jazz hip-hop. Some other songs like “Mellow My Man”, “Lazy Afternoon”, “Swept Away”, “What Goes On” and a couple of others are great hip-hop tracks, but they just didn’t stand out like “Silent Treatment”, to me at least.

For any Hip-Hop fan I think this is pretty much an essential; either you’re interested in seeing who The Roots were when they started or you just want some great jazz-influenced hip-hop from the 90s which totally defined the genre, I’m pretty sure everybody can find something they’ll like in this great effort. For anybody interested, the group announced a new album planning to be released soon for which a single was already released.

“I shall proceed and continue to rock the mic…”

by Jean-Guy