Phrenology by The Roots

Phrenology, the Roots' fifth album, came out on MCA on November 26, 2002, after more than two years of sessions at Electric Lady Studios in New York. The Philadelphia band that Black Thought and Questlove started in 1987 always played its hip-hop on real instruments, and here they push that idea about as far as it will go, with Questlove, Scratch and Scott Storch among the producers and the band doing most of the work in-house.

It's a restless, genre-hopping ride: jazzy grooves, rock crunch and soul balladry, with Black Thought's sharp, unflappable rhymes holding the center. Cody ChesnuTT, Musiq Soulchild, Talib Kweli and Jill Scott all drop by, and "The Seed (2.0)" is the one rock radio's countdowns grabbed. It didn't sell like Things Fall Apart, but it kept moving, went gold, and critics lined up to praise it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.