The Roots, Slightly Stoopid rock URI Ryan Center

04/29/09 -
The weekend's warm weather and good vibes lingered as the crowd filtered into the Ryan Center Sunday night to see Slightly Stoopid and the Roots lay down a night of reggae, rock and funk-fueled hip-hop. The show, sponsored by the Student Entertainment Committee, opened with San Diego-based reggae band Slightly Stoopid, which went on at 8 p.m., bringing its signature So-Cal sound to the stage. Spacey grooves melded with mellow horn riffs as the band, which opened with "Till it Gets Wet," launched into a muddle of hyper-speed reggae. Steel drums backed warm, lo-fi jams.

Slightly Stoopid got progressively tighter as the set went on, and towards the mid-point, as a steady stream of kids hopped over the gates into the general admissions area, the audience engaged in a bit of light moshing and crowd surfing.

The band, at various points throughout its set, chastised the audience for not smoking enough weed. As a weak cloud of smoke rose from the audience, singer Miles Doughty urged, "We gotta get some people smokin' in here!" This was followed by statements ranging from "What's up with Rhode Island, y'all be blazin' that chronic?" and the enthusiastically met, "Y'all want some bud?"

Slightly Stoopid finished off its set on a strong note, incorporating infectious, lively reggae covers of John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and Old Dirty Bastard's "Baby I Like it Raw." Although the band disappointingly refrained from playing some of its better-known hits like "2 a.m.," and "Bandelero," Slightly Stoopid still put on a feel-good set.

And then the interminable wait for the Roots began: Though Slightly Stoopid left the stage around 9:45 p.m., the audience was left in the lurch for an hour and a half as a disc jockey stalled on stage, trying, futilely, to keep the audience engaged despite the delay. But cuts of "Big Pimpin'," and "The Next Episode" can only keep an audience entertained for so long - the empty stage, still decked with Slightly Stoopid's gear, grew increasingly harder to ignore and the crowd started to boo. After an hour with no word from the stagehands or emcee, frustrated audience members started to trickle out.

Eleven o'clock came and went - the band's train allegedly broke down - and it wasn't until eight minutes later that Roots' drummer Questlove wordlessly emerged and started bringing the beat with slick precision. The rest of the band members surfaced shortly after; and they hurled themselves into performance-mode immediately, as if determined to make up for lost time.

And they tore it up from that point forward.

It's not a stretch to say that the Roots are one of the most dynamic bands in hip hop - they're aggressive showmen, and they come at it hard. The band set it off with "Thought @ Work," which had frontman Black Thought rhyming at warp-speed. The Roots have an ear-bending, neo-soul sound, but it isn't above topping off the talent with a good dose of novelty. Roots' sousaphone player, "Tuba Gooding Junior," is a pitch-perfect example of the Roots' showy determination to entertain on a grand scale.

The band kept at it with irrepressible energy, blasting into "Here I Come." The crowd was feeling it, and an audience member somehow made it up on stage, and snaked his way around the band members before getting taken out by a security guard during, "In the Music."

The band bounced acrobatically among genres incorporating hooks from songs like "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Pop Champagne" and "Bad to the Bone" into its original tracks.

The Roots wound down its set with "The Seed 2.0," proving the theory that it's best to give the audience what they want - the hits. The Roots Crew put on a relentlessly kinetic show with propulsive pull, and served as a reminder of what's great, and inimitable about live music: when it's good, when the energy is on, and the groove's unstoppable, it's totally immersive. The Roots attacked its set list with skillful intensity; the band killed it. Dynamic and dead on, the stage show was a knockout - and even though the delay drew jeers, the wait was more than worth it.