“Wake up everybody, no more sleepin’ in bed, no more backward thinkin’, time for thinkin’ ahead,” John Legend sings in the first single “Wake Up Everybody” on his new album Wake Up!. The idea of Wake Up!, a collaboration album by Legend and The Roots, came to fruition after the campaign of President Barack Obama during a time of heightened political awareness.
The album is predominantly covers of lesser known social political songs of the ’60s and ’70s, the one exception being Legend’s upbeat single “Shine” at the very end of the album. With Legend’s distinctive hybrid of R&B-soul-gospel stylings and the hip hop institution of The Roots re-working songs originally written by credited artists such as Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes (Wake Up Everybody), Bill Withers (I Can’t Write Left Handed) and Donny Hathaway (Little Ghetto Boy), the album is a work that modern soul lovers can appreciate. The choice of song Legend and The Roots made for this album is important; they took lesser-known yet message-packed protest songs, not chart topping hits, and made it work to their benefit as they introduce this socially conscious music to a new generation of listeners.
The album has a strong opening. “Hard Times,” originally done by Baby Huey and the Babysitters is infused with Legend’s retro swagger and The Roots’ ingenious musicality bringing in guitar, organ, horns and flutes to make the track luscious with funk and grit – adding to Legend’s dynamic vocals riffing all over the single. The track’s feel is modernized by The Roots’ rapper Black Thought who muses on breaking out of the inner city where there’s no opportunity for him. “Friends try to warn me to do it without them/ it’s no problem really it was never about them” raps Black Thought. There’s also a reference to revolutionary Malcolm X in passing, certainly dating the piece to be from early to mid 1960s.
There are a few songs where Legend and The Roots lose themselves, an example of this is the Marvin Gaye cover “Holy Wholy,” a slow ballad that feels indulgent on Legend’s part. Although it may be appreciated by a few R&B aficionados, it doesn’t have the mass appeal many of the other songs have, and feels out of place. This can also be said for the cover of Mike James Kirkland’s “Hang On In There.”
These missteps do not take away from the single “Wake Up Everybody,” a song of determination performed by Legend, rapper Common, and singer Melanie Fiona. As strings accompany guitar and choral vocals backing up Legend and Fiona’s vocal vibratos, the song uses its Motown flavor to deliver a message of hope and empowerment common of the civil rights era, but also makes it relevant to our current national struggles.
Although the album is not perfect, Legend and The Roots deserve respect for presenting obscure music of the past and proving its relevance to our current issues, such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America’s economic instability. Wake Up! is an album trying to create a public consciousness of these problems through song, and Legend and The Roots were smart to borrow and build upon music from the original protesting generation.