Conceived during and inspired by the 2008 presidential campaign, “Wake Up!” is a snapshot of R&B’s activist past. The suave crooner John Legend and impassioned hip-hop band the Roots resurrect 11 soulful protest songs of the ’60s and ’70s, aiming to conjure and capture a socially conscious fervor. Digging up cuts such as Les McCann’s “Compared to What” and Donny Hathaway’s “Little Ghetto Boy,” Legend and the Roots illustrate that these wartime, working-class narratives haven’t gone out of style.

Pleasures abound, even if the Roots don’t get too adventurous with the arrangements. The tone here is more revelatory than riotous, and the livelier moments are the stronger ones. A reworking of Baby Huey’s vivid “Hard Times” is punched up with a tension-filled bass, disarming horns and an assertive verse from the Roots’ Black Thought, while Ernie Hines’ “Our Generation” presents a funkier, dirtier Legend.

The Roots are no doubt in their comfort zone, and takes on Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody” and Mike James Kirkland’s “Hang on in There” are waiting-room coolness. Legend, however, is stretching out of his, and he packs far more spark here than he did on 2008’s “Evolver.” He cops a near spoken-word grit on Bill Withers’ “I Can’t Write Left Handed” and gets swept up in the reggae sway of Prince Lincoln’s “Humanity.” Credit Legend and the Roots for looking beyond the hits, and it’s a respectable love letter, if not quite an urgent one, to artists who shouldn’t be overlooked.

— Todd Martens

John Legend and the Roots
“Wake Up!”
Columbia
Two and a half stars (Out of four)

A big dose of vanilla smooth.

"John Legend is suave and smooth," read a text message crawling across the jumbo screen before the 13-time Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter's performance at the Gibson Amphitheatre on Tuesday. Indeed, with songs so silken and seamless as to be soporific, the 30-year-old R&B balladeer has emerged as the preeminent practitioner of vanilla latte soul for the sport coat-and-cravat crowd, a Brian McKnight for Generation Y.

To his credit, Legend affects a winsome affability on-stage and knows his role, winking at the audience, "I'm just here to set things off for y'all." In response, the capacity crowd swooned and swayed. The show was more akin to an hour-and-a-half love-in than rhythm-and-blues revue.