According to The Roots' Ahmir Questlove, the band have dropped a track from their new album because they just can't make it fit in. The song 'Birthday Girl', which featured a guest appearance from Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump, will no longer appear on their new album 'Rising Down', but will be released via iTunes as an exclusive download later this month.
Questlove explained that the track, originally set to open the album, was "sticking out like a sore thumb", so the group sought other ways to make it work, without success: "Then we were going to have a 'halftime' thing where it was gonna come in the middle of the record as a break from the political thing, but that didn't work, either," the drummer continued. "Then we tried to make it the last song on the record, and that wasn't working. Then we tried to make it the hidden track, and that wasn't effective. Basically the album was complete; it starts with 'Rising Down' and it ends with 'Rising Up,' so that makes more sense to me".
The LP is out in the UK on 28 Apr.