it's too good
it's too nice
she makes me finish too quick
is it love?
no not love
she turns my sexual trick
she says she's mine, i know she lies
first, i scream, then i cry
take a second of me
you beckon, i'll bleed
she suffocates me
she suffocates me with suggestion
i asked 'do you feel the same?'
and later on, maybe
i'll tell you my real name

-- Tricky, Suffocated Love

They say trip-hop is dead, but it really isn't much different than the large number of misinformed people still using the word "rave" Stateside.  Bristol, U.K.-born trip-hop, however, with its creeping, sexy melancholy, is too sneaky to be dead, slinking under the radar and manifesting itself again in bands like Spooky, Mudville, and even Burial. As for the old stuff, it lives on through people who cherish those incredible albums that came out in the late 90s; Massive Attack's Mezzanine (a group to which Tricky often contributed); Portishead's Dummy (easily No. 1); Sneaker Pimps' Becoming X; Sade's Love Deluxe; DJ Shadow's Entroducing...  and the list goes on. Though other classifications like "downtempo" and "ambient" blurred trip-hop's boundaries, there's no question about which artist became its face: Tricky's sludgy, oozing vocal made him at once an unmistakable icon of the genre (which happens to be one of my favorites - can you tell?). 

UPROOTED is a series of profiles of Minnesota-raised artists, writers, politicians and musicians who are doing what they do in some place that is not Minnesota.

From the catalog of the Reanimation Library. For a slideshow of images, click here.

When Andrew Beccone left Minneapolis for New York City in 2003, he had pretty much exhausted the rock band thing. He had traversed the country by van a dozen times or more, sweating and stinking and drinking and being broke playing drums with beloved locals Mickey Finn and Capital!Capital.

On the eve of his departure, Beccone took his drums to a friend who managed a warehouse. The drums were shrink-wrapped to a pallet and fork-lifted high onto a shelf for storage. He was a drummer retired and free to pursue a most unlikely path: He was headed to New York City to start a library.