Apocalypse Now: The Roots
Miles Marshall Lewis, Spin, March 1999
THE ROOTS' new album, Things Fall Apart, bears all the signs of the Big Statement. There are five separate covers, each featuring a disturbing historical paragraph (a crying baby sits in the ruins of Hiroshima; two terrified civil rights activists run from Southern cops; the bloody hand of a dead man clutches a playing card; etc.).
Total word count of piece: 280