The Roots
(Def Jam)
Think what you may about The Roots' controversial razz at fading presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon. But the fact that Philly's finest hip-hop crew, albeit orchestrated by drummer ?uestlove, had the awesome audacity to diss the Tea Party witch with "Lyin' Ass Bitch", a song from the first EP of legendary funk-punk underdogs Fishbone, just goes to show the depth of musical knowledge at play within the ranks of this intrepid group, an aptitude they take to tasteful task on their tenth proper LP and finest work since Things Fall Apart.
Their debut foray into concept album territory, undun tells the existential tale of a fictional composite of several real people named Redford Stephens (1974-1999) dying in reverse.
"undun is the story of this kid who becomes criminal, but he wasn't born criminal," the group states in the opening text to the short film they shot for the new album. "...Just some kid who begins to order his world in a way that makes the most sense to him at a given moment..."
It begins with the character's acceptance of his fate on the song "Sleep" and ends with a stirring four-song avant-classical-jazz mini-suite centered around a cover of the Sufjan Stevens Michigan highlight "Redford (for Yia-Yia and Pappou)",--featuring the songwriter himself on piano--a tune that set the stage for the primary impetus of the album itself. And in between these ends you get eight of The Roots' most challenging and soulful jams yet, tracks that don't exactly protract a concrete narrative of the events leading up to Stephens' tragic end as much as they do provide a sobering abstract alluding to the stream of violent acts, inappropriate choices and stark moments of clarity in correlation of the events leading up to his demise.
Roots purists who dig the Phrenology freak-out "Water" and their recent Dilla Joints tribute mixtape will no doubt appreciate the artistic left turns on undun, particularly the Sufjan suite as well as the Portishead-esque "I Remember". And the hip-hop heads can definitely get down with cuts like "Make My" featuring Internet upstart Big K.R.I.T. and the album's hottest banger, "Kool On", where Black Thought spits fire like "I'm never sleeping like I'm on methamphetamines/ Move like my enemy 10 steps ahead of me." Meanwhile, the real MVP of this record is once again Dice Raw, who brought so much heat to such classic tracks as "The Lesson Part 1" from Do You Want More?!!!??!, the Illadelph Halflife gem "Clones" and the title track to 2009's soulful surprise How I Got Over in the past and does even more so on the likes of "Lighthouse" and "Tip The Scale" here, continuing to flex his skills as a singer (and a fine one at that).
The trick of trying to pull off a prank like playing a rude Fishbone obscurity for the entrance music to Jimmy's interview with Bachmann might not have been the wisest form of decision making in the age of the Internet know-it-all. But what this unwanted heat did bring forth was the free publicity windfall that followed the shitstorm, casting more light on the release of this excellent record that anyone who wants to hear the graceful way by which hip-hop should age should add to their collections right away.
DOWNLOAD: "Make My,","Kool On," the Redford Suite RON HART
