The easy-flowing Things Fall Apart made the Roots one of the most popular artists of alternative rap's second wave. Anticipated nearly as much as it was delayed, the proper studio follow-up, Phrenology, finally appeared in late 2002, after much perfectionist tinkering by the band -- so much that the liner notes include recording dates (covering a span of two years) and, sometimes, histories for the individual tracks. Coffeehouse music programmers beware: Phrenology is not Things Fall Apart redux; it's a challenging, hugely ambitious opus that's by turns brilliant and bewildering, as it strains to push the very sound of hip-hop into the future. Despite a few gentler tracks (like the Nelly Furtado and Jill Scott guest spots), Phrenology is the hardest-hitting Roots album to date, partly because it's their most successful attempt to re-create their concert punch in the studio. ?uestlove's drums positively boom out of the speakers on the Talib Kweli duet Rolling With Heat; the fantastic, lean guitar groover The Seed (2.0) (with neo-soul auteur Cody ChesnuTT); and the opening section of Water. The ten-minute Water is the album's centerpiece, a powerful look at former Roots MC Malik B.'s drug problems that morphs into a downright avant-garde sound collage. Similarly, lead single Break You Off, a neo-soul duet with Musiq, winds up in a melange of drum'n'bass programming and live strings. If moves like those, or the speed-blur Bad Brains punk of !!!!!!!, or the drum'n'bass backdrop of poet Amiri Baraka's Something in the Way of Things (In Town) can seem self-consciously eclectic, it's also true that Phrenology is one of those albums where the indulgences and far-out experiments make it that much more fascinating, whether they work or not. Plus, slamming grooves like Rock You, Thought Work, and the aforementioned The Seed (2.0) keep things exciting and vital. If this really is the future of hip-hop, then the sky is the limit. [The two hidden bonus tracks are Rhymes and Ammo, the Talib Kweli collaboration that appeared on Soundbombing, Vol. 3, and Something to See, another techno-inflected jam.] ~ Steve Huey, Rovi

1		Phrentrow
2		Rock You
3		!!!!!!!
4		Sacrifice
5		Rolling With Heat
6		Waok (Ay) Rollcall
7		Thought @ Work
8		The Seed (2.0)
9		Break You Off
10		Water
11		Quills
12		Pussy Galore
13		Complexity
14		Something in the Way of Things (In Town)
15		[Untitled Track]
16		[Untitled Track]
17		[Untitled Track]
18		[Untitled Track]