Smart & Angry

“As far as ‘The Fire’ is concerned, we wanted to balance the record out also, with a sign of hope, a ray of hope. ‘The Fire’ is almost an anthem, if you will. It’s like a hang-on-in-there, if you will, for us.”

-Roots drummer and co-producer ?uestlove on MTV News

The past few Roots albums have been pretty dark, almost depressing, which I tend to lean towards in my personal outlook. From 2pac speaking addressing urban economics, Blu rapping for the blue-collar workers, or even Kanye's bitterness towards college on his first album, I like when artist try to stand for something with an opinion. While we have whiny rich guy sleepy rap (Drake), emo scream over horrible production (Eminem), and overly exaggerated thugtastic music (too many to list), my choice for album of the year is The Roots-How I Got Over. It's dark, rustic, and moody, while not compromising with overly synthesized sounds, auto-tune, and club bangers.

"The Fire" at first glance sounds like the standard fare of a Do good and things will be ok" song. However when you listen closely its more in vein of "Stuff sucks, but you still gotta try hard" .The music video itself doesn't pull any punches back, its violent and unforgiving, in the same theme as M.I.A. - Born Free Video.

While the video may seem like a just a sad fare of prisoners being executed and used for food as the bad guys win at the end, the empty box leaves an ambiguous ending for interpretation of the viewer. While there are no right answers to what the box symbolizes, maybe it has something to do with the line "you don't say good luck, you say don't give up."