THE world’s best hip-hop group are coming to Manchester this December.

Philadelphia collective The Roots play Manchester Academy on Tuesday, December 2.

The Grammy award winning trailblazers are known for their incisive lyrics and live instrumentation.

Led by Tariq ‘Black Thought’ Trotter on vocals, Ahmir ‘?uestlove’ Thompson on drums, Kamal Gray on keyboards, Frank Knuckles on percussion, Kirk ‘Captain Kirk’ Douglas on guitar and bassist Owen Biddle have garned critical praise throughout their career.

A band with uncompromised artistic control and integrity, previous albums such as Illadelph Halflife, Things Fall Apart, Phrenology and The Tipping Point showed an astonishing range of vision and musical ability.

And their tenth LP Rising Down released in April showed they were continuing to take bolder steps adding new depths and range to their repertoire.

The Roots co-founder ?uestlove said: “This is probably our most political album to date, dealing with addiction, nihilism, hypocritical double standards in the prison system and overall life in Philadelphia. “I'd say it’s more mature and intense than all of our efforts, but not a ‘downer’ as most people expect us to do.”

The political nature of Rising Down is not only heard within the music. The title comes from William T. Vollmann’s treatise on violence entitled ‘Rising Up and Rising Down’, and the release date fell on the 16th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots that were sparked by the acquittal of the police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

Tickets priced £18.50 are on sale now from gigsandtours.com, the 24-hour hotline 0871 2200 260 and 0161 832 1111.

For more on the band see theroots.com.