Editor’s Note: The Albumism staff has selected what we believe to be the 110 Best Albums of the 2010s, representing a varied cross-section of artists, genres, and styles. Click “Next Album” below to explore each album in the list or for easier navigation, view the full introduction & album index here.
THE ROOTS | How I Got Over
Def Jam (2010)
Selected by Justin Chadwick
With eleven studio albums to their credit and a twelfth reportedly on the not-too-distant horizon, a compelling case can be made that The Legendary Roots Crew has been the most prolific hip-hop group over the course of the past 25 years and change. And all while holding down their lucrative day job as the The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon’s house band for the past ten-and-a-half years and running. Many will point to early-career albums like Do You Want More?!!!??! (1995), Illadelph Halflife (1996) and Things Fall Apart (1999) as their finest moments on wax to date, and rightfully so. But How I Got Over—the first album they released to usher in their third decade of making music together—arguably belongs in the discussion of their top-tier output. Featuring a bevy of intriguing and varied collaborators (John Legend, Monsters of Folk, Joanna Newsom, and Phonte, among others), their cathartic and thoroughly captivating ninth LP finds Black Thought, Questlove and crew in heightened self-reflective mode, as they embrace their well-earned elder statesmen status in the hip-hop community and navigate the then-nascent Obama era with tempered optimism.
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