The adversarial track, “Adrenaline!” served as the second single for The Roots’ ‘Things Fall Apart.” More specifically, it was the college radio single that paved the way for the reception of the main single off the album, “You Got Me.” Dice Raw and future Roc-A-Fella alum Beanie Sigel jump on the track. The Philly emcees go back and forth tackling rivals – whether on the mic or on the street, and at times blurring the two. Produced by Scott Storch, “Adrenaline!” is chock full of banging piano keys and rhythmic turntable scratching from the mouths of resident beatboxers Rahzel and Scratch. By simply adding Black Thought’s dark cadence in addition to those elements, “Adrenaline!” contains one of the most memorable hooks on the album, without any vocal sampling or a singer on it.

HipHopDX exclusively caught up with Dice Raw to talk about the track for the 15th Anniversary of Things Fall Apart.

On working with Scott Storch…

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“Scott was always an extra special talent. And that’s the one thing I always felt. From when I first met Scott, and just hearing other people play the piano who thought they were producers. There were more piano players than producers, and some people were more producers than piano players. But he is…I don’t think there’s anybody on the planet that can do what Scott does, to be honest with you.”

On hearing Beanie Sigel for the first time…

“The first time I heard ‘Adrenaline!’ it was only Malik [B] and Beanie Sigel on the song. I was just blown away by what I was hearing. I was blown away. This was before Beanie was signed to Roc-A-Fella. It was amazing what he did. That was the first time…I heard about him on the streets of Philadelphia, you know who he was and what kind of person he was. I never heard anything done and when I heard that I was blown away, totally floored. I was excited. I couldn’t wait to write something to get on the song.”

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On the importance Things Fall Apart holds for him…

“That’s when I was very young. I was a teenager. It was a different time period in music. It was a Neo-Soul movement going on and underground love for the art. It was still around. The love is not there any longer, but the respect people have for musicality is not there anymore. That was the last, of the last, of the good stuff. Of course being young, and being in love at the time, all those different things going and traveling all around the world; of course those things they have a lot to do with it. But at the same time, I think people grew up and they came into their own. I think a lot of people came into their own around that time period and had that record with them and I think that record really sticks with people because that was the last frontier of everything that was represented in that era. Then right after that was ‘Bling Bling’ and we still in that, to this day.”