It's been a while since we've seen a full release from The Roots, the latest being Undun which was released in 2011, but far from disappearing during the interim, The Roots are more visible than ever, as they have appeared playing for numerous functions and The Late Show. However, their "hiatus" ends with the release of their upcoming concept album, & Then You Shoot Your Cousin. Black Thought of the The Roots spoke up about their most recent effort to XXL Mag, saying:
“We’re close to being done on it, it’s coming soon, hopefully sometime this Spring. It’s called And Then You Shoot Your Cousin. It’s conceptual; it’s another concept album in the spirit of Undun, but it’s not just about just one kind of character, we create quite a few different characters in this record. It’s satire, but in that satire it’s an analysis of some of the stereotypes perpetuated in not only the hip-hop community, but in the community. I don’t know if that makes any sense.”
If the album sounds similar to Undun's conceptual aspirations, you would not be mistaken. However Thought goes at length discussing what differentiates & Then You Shoot Your Cousin from their prior effort, saying it will not focus on one character but a myriad of people.
“We created some of these characters that we kind of see,” Thought said. “We as artists, musicians, Philadelphians, New Yorkers, we as black men, we’re familiar with very many of these characters, and we kind of introduce them to the rest of the world in a manner that makes them more easily understood than maybe seeing it."
However like Undun, &TYSYC will be on the shorter side as well.
“Hopefully you’ll get something new from it every time you listen to it, you’ll hone in on something different," he said on the matter. "It’s short enough to do that, to take in, to digest in one sitting, so to speak. I think right now it’s at maybe 34 minutes; there may be one or two musical things added on to the record that I know is the record at this point. But I don’t think it will be any longer than 36 or 37 minutes in its entirety. So in that, it’s short enough to digest, but it’s gonna be dense. So dense that maybe in one sitting you’ll listen to it and only listen to the piano and string arrangements, and then you’ll listen to it again and you’ll get into the actual words that are being said, and you’ll listen again and get into some of the other musicality. There’s very many layers to this record, but it doesn’t take place over very much time.”
Supposedly this album will see a Spring release date, let's hope that remains true. Are you excited for this record? How well do you think it will stand up to their previous entry, Undun.