The Roots’ Game Theory rocks dark edge of apocalypse.

Understanding what makes the Roots so necessary means changing the way we think about genres: these Philly natives aren’t so much a group of rappers who play their own instruments as they are a rock band whose frontman happens to rap. Making this perceptual shift frees us from judging the Roots by hip-hop’s prevailing standards—their first-week sales, their radio spins, or how many dance fads they’ve started. Instead, it allows us to view the Roots in the tradition of great African-American rock outfits—as the missing link, say, between Living Colour and TV on the Radio.

Seeing the Roots as rockers has to do with more than just their musicianship; in the band’s aptitude for albums over singles, in its unstinting dedication to live performance, in the fluidity of its line-up (the group has boasted nearly a dozen different members since its inception in 1996), and in the relative anonymity of its lead vocalist, the unit resembles nothing so much as ’70s-era funk architects the Meters.

Like the Meters’ Art Neville (brother to Aaron), Tariq Trotter (aka Black Thought) is not so much his band’s face as its steady hand, taming the excesses of his more wildly expressive collaborators. In this schema, the Roots’ drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson is the band’s presiding creative force, playing a part comparable to the Meters’ Joseph “Zigaboo” Modelilste, whose beats were plundered in the late ’80s by rap groups ranging from the Beastie Boys to N.W.A. Like his predecessor, ?uestlove’s influence on contemporary music is considerable—he’s drummed on-stage for Jay-Z, helmed the music for Michel Gondry’s Block Party, and contributed to albums by John Mayer and Fiona Apple. Handsome, stylish, and witty, Thompson has the public profile of a singer, not a skinsman.

The fact that the band’s best-known member is a drummer says much about the Roots’ special place in the industry. When it formed in the mid-1990s, the group was just one among many in what was called the Soulquarian movement, a loose collective of neo-soul rappers, singers, and players that included future stars Common, Jill Scott, and D’Angelo, among others. After getting on with MCA Records in 1996, the Roots convinced the label to sign their friends, reasoning that the band’s arty, intelligent music could only be understood in the context of the larger Philly scene. Over the last decade, the Soulquarians have produced a half-dozen classic records, all thanks to a business arrangement that could simply never be brokered in today’s dismal music industry.

Reached at home, ?uest acknowledges his band just might be the last of a dying breed—a group whose corporate bosses have always seen beyond the bottom line.

“There’s no such thing as artist development anymore,” he explains. “I think the Roots were the last people allowed to get on the caboose of that train. When we signed on, the label people always spoke in the future tense; they spoke of fourth and fifth albums. It’s rare that you get good fourth albums from most hip-hop artists—so the fact that we got to album number nine is a miracle on its own. In our case, we were able to afford to take the high road because our survival never depended on record sales—it depended on concert sales. As long as we keep selling out shows, we can afford to make the music we want to make.”

The Roots’ indulgence of their wildest dreams reached its pinnacle on 2002’s Phrenology, a lavish 75-minute journey to the centre of their psychedelic souls. Where earlier incarnations of the band were often too politely jazzy, Phrenology was its Bitches Brew, a strident declaration of independence from the past.

“When we were doing Phrenology,” recalls ?uest, “the law was that this was the album where we would do everything we weren’t supposed to do—the taboo record where we could work out whatever we had in our system.”

That album’s follow-up, 2004’s The Tipping Point, was strange for all the wrong reasons; in their attempts to curry favour with radio programmers, the veterans solicited productions from the Neptunes and former-member-turned-hitmaker Scott Storch. The result, a relatively tame hip-hop record, was not just unbecoming, but also utterly beneath them.

Licking their wounds after that debacle, the Roots mulled over several possibilities for their next recording session; one option had the band handing the reins to pop producer Jon Brion (who would later cohelm Kanye West’s Late Registration), others had it decamping to South America and Africa for several months. In the end, the Roots stayed close to home, writing and recording last year’s Game Theory in a makeshift studio much like the one they had used for their debut, 1997’s Organix.

The result is the band’s strongest album to date, one that merges Phrenology’s textural adventures with the focused songcraft of 1999’s Things Fall Apart. With its stark landscapes and paranoid lyrics, Game Theory has no recent precedents in hip-hop; the touchstones, instead, are Radiohead’s Kid A and Nine Inch Nails’ With Teeth, albums that similarly depict the present day as the glinting black edge of the apocalypse.

“I know a lot of people are saying Game Theory’s a return to form, but I’m not sure what form we’re returning to with it,” says ?uestlove. “For this one, it was important to me that it have the same sombre, melancholy overtones throughout. The fact that it’s a consistent record from start to finish—I think that’s what people are hearing as the return to form.”

What they’re hearing in particular on Game Theory is ?uestlove at the top of his form, summoning a downpour of percussive wonders. Whether it’s the sharp metallic twitching of “In The Music”, the hard-panning kettle chimes of “False Media”, or the title track’s sizzling deep-pocket grooves—he proves himself one of the world’s best drummers, no matter the genre. Forget rap and rock—with this sober consideration of their troubled nation, the Roots are reaching all the way back to the blues.

The Roots play the sold-out Commodore tonight and Friday (February 1 and 2).