The Roots Do a Live Cover of Mayfield’s “Move On Up”

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“Seeing The Roots live for the first time was a holy, rambunctious, time-bending, excessive, erotic, and otherworldly experience that inspired me to respond in kind. I was not raised to be a brave person. As an immigrant kid, my home was ripe with fears, my own girl-body being the worst terror of all. Hip hop, with its incessance of wonder, anger, rigor, pride, invention, was the soundscape that taught me how to square my shoulders and save my own life, and this particular Curtis Mayfield song remains my angel.”
—Cynthia Dewi Oka