It’s fitting that the group named their breakout album after Chinua Achibe’s 1958 novel, Things Fall Apart. Much like Achibe’s exploration of Nigeria under the yoke of British control in the 1890s, Things Fall Apart, the album asks important questions about the nature of community and culture. What happens when a community or a culture is threatened by outside, alien forces? Why do the victims of those incursions so often turn their trauma into pathology? How can a strong and functioning sense of community protect against encroachment and oppression? Obviously, there are no sure answers to any of these questions, but what we are left with is a snapshot of a band and a culture in transition. Chinua Achibe’s novel demanded that its protagonists hold onto their cultural customs in the wake of the arrival of Europeans who sought to destroy them, Things Fall Apart raises a similar call to hip-hop culture. As with any art form that comes into contact with capitalism, hip-hop in 1999 found itself being pulled by the opposing forces of creativity and profit. In the wake of rap music’s emergence as a commercial force, it further distanced itself from the culture that produced it.

Read more at: https://www.okayplayer.com/rediscovered-the-roots-things-fall-apart