10 Years Strong, Roots Picnic Remains a Singular All-Star Festival Experience [Recap]

The 10th Annual Roots Picnic was a celebration of timeless and generational talents

10 years is a long time. And no one knows it better than The Roots. If you were to tell us in 2007 that in just a few years' time, Philly's beloved would find yet another ceiling to smash-up (leaping to the screen with Jimmy Fallon) and come out on the other end of the decade as musical accomplices to The Tonight Show's return to east coast sovereignty, you may have incited a culture-wide cognitive lapse reminiscent of John Witherspoon's hissing call to fisticuffs.

But here we are in 2017 with the unequivocal kings of late-night interluding. They've grayed and expanded in predictable fashion, but Roots Picnic, their shoot-for-the-stars-and-land-em-all gift to the city that raised them, has been a living testament to an uncommon legacy and continued growth, both as a band and a collective of cultural curators. The annual landing in South Philly has grown itself; what was once a two-stage outfit added a third and has only become more precise in focus since its inaugural run, cultivating a singular spotlight on generational and timeless talents alike year after year.

Nearing 30 years in the game (20 on the internets) the IllaFifth are also keenly aware of the digital shift beneath their QWERTYs, the artists the have sprung free of the web's sticky and saturated void, as well as those doing the hell out of right now, legacy be damned. The type of irreverent swaggering that embolden Kanye's rants and add weight to his prophetics. An extension of their respective frequencies, Roots Picnic has consistently hit that subversive commercial sweet spot, drawing us in with big names from the camp, holding us with the sounds of Soulquarian descendants that may have otherwise remained estranged to their patrons.

With all of those historical parameters in place, this year's bill was a logical one-up on both spiritual and astral planes. Hearts were touched by the loving sounds of Noname and James Vincent McMorrow. Trap hands and milly rocks swung in full collective force thanks to Jeezy, 21 Savage, PNB Rock and Atlanta’s latest star, Playboi Carti. Offsetting the Soundcloud generation, Black Thought and the mighty J Period hosted another installment of their live mixtape series, wrangling the gawds, Mobb Deep, and reuniting embattled Roots alum and spliff-clutching super producer, Scott Storch, with his hometown constituency. Fat Joe, joined the crew and ran through a deceptively deep catalog of hits, taking a moment to put one up for the late, J Dilla, before leaving the stage.

And then there’s Thundercat. the madcap BRAINFEEDER bass man that flipped a flattering live mix into a hazed-out, low-end-heavy excursion to jazz’s outer limits; detouring via disco ball with “Friend Zone” and hitting his yacht rock stride with the crowd favorite “Them Changes.” A sun-kissed performance never short on the cosmic slop.

Solange, in a rare conventional festival appearance, brought high-art, soul and all the feels to the festival's South Stage. The decadent, almost transcendent, set radiated reds and blues and faint purples under her own blood moon as the sun set over Benjamin Franklin Bridge; some mystical catharsis no camera could fully capture. Truly one for the Picnic books if anyone else is keeping record.

For any other configuration of terrestrial musicians, following Solo and The Everlasting Glow's therapy session would have been inconceivable and ill-advised. People were genuinely better and more considerate of one another at the close of it, and I don't think I've ever seen anything affect a group of people on that scale with such overwhelming precision.

Leave it to P (Pharrell) & The Yessirs (The Roots) to escalate an already impossible high.

Spanning the many phases of an uncommon career (with a new member in the wildly unsung Stro Elliott,) an all-star line-up deconstructed the respective Neptunes, N.E.R.D. and solo catalogs of a man N.O.R.E. proclaimed to be "the best producer of our generation" upon storming the stage as the first of a seemingly endless stock of surprise guests. But it wouldn't take more than the opening minute or so of the Daft Punk collaboration "Lose Yourself To Dance," recalibrated to the shade of Prince, to realize this more than mere conjecture or a well-intentioned homie gushing over your greatness in public. Midway through the set, devout Pharrell disciple, Tyler The Creator, a generational talent in his own right, would rush the stage to salute his tie-dye-teed sage during a pulsing "Lap Dance" rendition, joining in on the celebration as a living testament to the producer's impact on the new guard of renaissance men and women. Pusha Twould join for a necessary and proper Clipse medley, followed by the lovely SWV for a retrospective on their collaborative work, where Pharrell's very first on-record murmurs appear.

The show came to a close on a fitting note, "Happy" flooding the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd with an inspiring final note. Pharrell hits the crowd to sign some autographs, shake some hands, kiss some babies. We dissolve from stage-side, flooding the streets in concerted disbelief as we tend to do in those first final moments. God dream or mass hallucination, Roots Picnic remains the only place on earth something is even possible. Where entire era's of a legacy can be so academically reconstructed by some of music's most brilliant minds. Through the kush smoke, cocoa butter and secondhand cigarette gassings, if only for a few moments, remained the uncanny sensation of being entirely intertwined in collective reverence and gratitude.

Through the kush smoke, cocoa butter and secondhand cigarette gassings, remained the uncanny sensation of being entirely intertwined in collective reverence and gratitude. And what a gift that is, even for a few fleeting red-eyed moments.