Why don't the Roots try harder?

I know this is a music blog, but here's a quick aside: I love the NBA playoffs. I'll watch anybody play, but my favorite team is the Detroit Pistons. They are the toughest, most talented team in the league, but they have a problem: they don't show up for half of their games. They tend to phone in a half-hearted performance all to often, and it's even more disappointment when you know they can achieve on another level when they want to,

Here's what this has to do with music: I just bought the new Roots album. With great instrumentation, furious energy, an amazingly versatile drummer, and a talented front man, they should be one of the greatest things that ever happened to rap music. They have put out two of the best rap albums of the last decade with Phrenology and Game Theory. But there's a problem: they've also released The Tipping Point and now Rising Down: two flat, uninspired, unemotional, unadventurous albums where they simply sound like they don't care.

I would tell you about individual tracks on the new Roots album, but I don't remember any. That's because the tracks are so generic, I don't remember any of it five minutes after playing the record. Where's the adventure? Where's the soul influence, the guitar solos, the bizarre samples (they used Radiohead's "You And Whose Army?" on their last record), and the fun choruses that made their other albums great? This band needs to wait until they have some real ideas to make a record and stop throwing together half-assed performances like this.

Oh well, their next record will probably be great....