feat. Nas

feat. John Legend

How I Got Over avail­able in stores.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

John Legend & The Roots' joint LP, Wake Up!, is sched­uled to drop September 21st. Meanwhile, if you haven't copped How I Got Over, The Roots' new stu­dio LP, you're really miss­ing out. [via]

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This remix is not on the album that you should BUY! *cops vinyl as you tweet*

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Legend & The Roots re-craft a lost clas­sic by the great, yet some­how under­ap­pre­ci­ated, soul singer Ernie Hines. Mississippi-born, Hines grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he got his start singing in the church. Soul music even­tu­ally caught his inter­est and the singer/guitarist ended up play­ing with the likes of Lowell Fulsom and Clyde McPhatter. In 1970 he signed to the leg­endary Stax label, where he recorded “Our Generation.” Like much of that era’s music, Hines’ song doesn’t give in to the tumult and con­flict of the times, refus­ing to be con­sumed by it and offer­ing a call to young peo­ple to make the world a bet­ter place. It’s raw and soul­ful and honest.

Legend and The Roots’s mod­ern inter­pre­ta­tion of “Our Generation” retains the all of the authen­tic­ity of the orig­i­nal track: It gets funky from the out­set, with big fat brass and an ice cold key­board vamp, inspi­ra­tional back­ing singers and a par­tic­u­larly gritty vocal by Legend who reit­er­ates Hines’s 40-year-old mes­sage about mak­ing the future bet­ter by “get­ting rid of all the hate.”

Here you go…

Continuing to gar­ner acclaim for OYO, an album of music that inspired her while grow­ing up in Benin, the album's first video for the sin­gle "Move On Up" fea­tur­ing guest vocals from Bono and John Legend as well as the imagery, and appear­ances by the dancers, of the acclaimed musi­cal FELA!, which is cur­rently nom­i­nated for 11 Tony Awards.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The newest song from The Roots' HIGO just dropped over at Okayplayer. Go check out "The Fire" fea­tur­ing John Legend.