The first steps for Wake Up! were already put in 2008. Barack Obama was yet to be elected and the domestic politics of the United States left much to be desired. There was a lot of unrest and there were clear parallels to be drawn with the unrest that raged in black America in the early 1970s. Not for nothing does Wake Up! like the soundtrack to a blaxploitation movie. Musically, all injustice is
… exposed with songs previously immortalized by artists of musical protest at the time, such as , and , , , , and . The highlight is the twelve-minute long I Can't Write Lefthanded, which Withers wrote especially for his album . At the time, it was intended for the battered veterans returning from Vietnam, a little over 30 years later it acts as a consolation for the soldiers from Iraq, with the suffering beautifully articulated by Cap'n Kirk Douglas's piercing guitar solo. The collaboration between Legend and The Roots tastes like more, because Legend has rarely sounded as powerful as on Wake Up! (AD)more
