The Roots - Undun

cinc

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Just listened to a stream of it on some strange site (it was taken off shortly after), its epic, I think its the album of the year on first listen.



Its a concept album about the life of Redford, a fictional criminal who was killed in 1999. Its 38 minutes long and very concise - no fillers and its sequenced beautifully.

This is grown up music and I doubt it will be successful commercially (or even treated as a classic), but without a doubt this is the Roots' best work to date.

Being a concept album, lyrics is much more in the focus: Phonte had to rewrite his verse 17 times. Every verse and chorus is sang from the perspective of Redford, and the album has a reversed timeline.

The music is understated, no club bangers on it, there are a few amazing musical breaks and the music is always supporting the story and in the end it accumultes in a mind blowing 4 part instrumental suite featuring Sufjan Stevens.

You should really listen to it in one go, and not as background music.

The lyrics are available here: undun lyrics « Search Results « Okayplayer

A short movie made for the album (featuring 90-120 second snippets of 4 songs)


The first single:


The first three movements of the album ending suite:

The Roots – “Redford”/”Possibility”/”Will To Power” (Stereogum Premiere) - Stereogum


Three more snippets:
The Roots: undun | KevinNottingham.com | The Underground Hip Hop Authority | Hip Hop Music, Videos & Reviews
 

Sally Cinnamon

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Where can you listen to it?

By the way, slightly on topic, there's a brilliant concept album I listened to recently called 'Hospice' by a New York band called the Antlers. It's from 2009 so you may have heard it. If not, you should check it out. It's sad but brilliant.
 

cinc

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Sally Cinnamon said:
Where can you listen to it?

By the way, slightly on topic, there's a brilliant concept album I listened to recently called 'Hospice' by a New York band called the Antlers. It's from 2009 so you may have heard it. If not, you should check it out. It's sad but brilliant.
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Its taken off the german site that streamed it, but the bad people of the internet did their usual depraved thing and ripped it.

It will be released a week from now officially, I had it pre-ordered weeks ago.
 

Easy V

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cinc said:
LilBoosieDevil's Channel - YouTube
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What an amazing album, and I'd agree that it could be their best to date. Black Thought is on top form and all of the features have stepped up. Can't pick a favourite track just yet, as there really isn't one that I find to be weak. The OtherSide, Tip the Scale, Make My, Kool On, LightHouse, I Remember... Such a consistant album, from an incredibly consistant band.

Could be my album of the year. Although I'm about to listen to El Camino, so hopefully that will run it close. Loving the leaks today haha.
 

cinc

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Its out officially in stream form:

First Listen: The Roots, 'undun' : NPR
"And what I did came back to me eventually," narrator Redford Stephens, transcendentally portrayed by Black Thought, posthumously intones in "Sleep," the first track from The Roots' 13th album undun. Death pervades undun; it follows Stephens, a poor kid from Philadelphia and victim to the drug trade, from the moment he surrenders himself to the game all the way to his inevitable end. Along the way, no verse is wasted, no optimism is spared; each line is like a shovelful of dirt on Redford's coffin. At 39 minutes, undun feels like a lifetime, because it is one.

The album is gorgeously arranged by the incomparable ?uestlove, The Roots' expert bandleader and producer, whose recent projects include the "Philly Paris Lockdown," a reinterpretation of the works of the French impressionist composers Erik Satie, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel. On undun, ?uestlove renders the lush modality of these composers in the vibrant hues of early-'70s soul music; the eerie, ghostly outro of "Make My" sublimates the drug dealer's hopeless, nihilistic glory into misty Moog and starry synths in the vein of Stevie Wonder's "Superwoman (Where Were You When I Needed You?)."

The record's most affecting element, however, is its lyricism, led with gimmick-less seriousness by Black Thought, a rapper whose storytelling is unencumbered by sophomoric jocularity or false cartoonishness. His desolation is unvarnished and striking in "I Remember," in which he darkly rhymes, "I drew a two of hearts from a deck of cards / A stock trick from my empty repertoire / Another hopeless story, never read at all / I'm better off looking for the end where the credits are." He's given fleeting respite from the stress of the drug trade in "Kool On," but is harshly pulled back to earth the next morning in "The OtherSide," where paranoia surrounds him again: "We obviously need to tone it down a bit / Running around town spending time like it's counterfeit."

The album's guest spots are similarly purposeful. Producer Just Blaze's recent conquests with Drake and Rick Ross (among many) have made him ubiquitous on pop radio, but in "Stomp" he transforms the four-on-the-floor, tambourine-rattling beat into a plodding chain gang. Longtime Roots collaborator P.O.R.N., whose "Every thought is dark as a glass of Guinness" (in "The OtherSide") sounds like a combination of Curren$y and Malice of Clipse. In "One Time," Dice Raw issues a heartbreakingly dark verse on the predestination of his cursed life, asking, "I wonder when you die, do you hear harps and bagpipes? / If you ball on the other side of the crack pipe? / N——s learn math just to understand the crack price / then dive in headfirst like a jackknife." These features peak in "Tip the Scale," the most lush and affecting rumination of crack sales since Kanye West and Jon Brion's "Crack Music."

The album ends with a short suite of pieces based on Sufjan Stevens' instrumental "Redford (For Yia-Yia & Pappou)" from his album Michigan; it even features the composer on piano. The ghostly backup vocals and muted horns perfectly match undun's spectral artfulness. Brilliantly, instead of transforming "Redford" into a functional sample, it's presented in state. ?uestlove treats "Redford" almost like a piece of movie music, accompanying the action rather than recapitulating it. The result is a cinematic moment waiting to be processed, fictionalized into hip-hop. It's as if the listener zoomed in beyond the safe narrative distance of the song and actually ended up in the movie. This movement of the suite is like a rap track under a microscope, the sample blown up so large that the beats that keep hip-hop as the frame of reference are a horizon enshrouded in fog. By the third act, Stephens has been replaced by DD Jackson in a careening duet with ?uestlove, whose long-cultivated drumming heft and precision play like fists through a plaster wall or bullet holes through a car door. Finally, credits roll over a sublime string quartet, mercifully for Black Thought's black thoughts — at least for a moment, before ?uestlove's meticulously arranged strings are silenced by the chilling, deathly growl of a struck piano.

Black Thought has never been frivolous, but there's extra seriousness to his performance on this record that can only be explained by someone who truly knows him. "Redford is definitely compiled [from] five or six people that we've known from Philadelphia," Questlove told Spin magazine recently. "Tariq [a.k.a. Black Thought]'s entire family, his cousin and brothers, have literally all been this guy. Tariq is the only one that has escaped the fate that most of his family have encountered. The narrative definitely hits home with him more than any other member of the band.
 

cinc

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App Store - undun

The undun app is a companion piece to the The Roots 2011 (Island Def Jam) release "undun". Through the use of photos, lyrics, a series of interviews and music video vignettes, the app provides an immersive experience that elucidates the life and times of one Redford Stephens (1974-1999), a complex youth who struggles to define himself within a troubled inner city milieu and dies in the process.
 

Hectic

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It's in my hip-hop thread to download...
 

Red Hand Devil

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cinc said:
Just listened to a stream of it on some strange site (it was taken off shortly after), its epic, I think its the album of the year on first listen.



Its a concept album about the life of Redford, a fictional criminal who was killed in 1999. Its 38 minutes long and very concise - no fillers and its sequenced beautifully.

This is grown up music and I doubt it will be successful commercially (or even treated as a classic), but without a doubt this is the Roots' best work to date.

Being a concept album, lyrics is much more in the focus: Phonte had to rewrite his verse 17 times. Every verse and chorus is sang from the perspective of Redford, and the album has a reversed timeline.

The music is understated, no club bangers on it, there are a few amazing musical breaks and the music is always supporting the story and in the end it accumultes in a mind blowing 4 part instrumental suite featuring Sufjan Stevens.

You should really listen to it in one go, and not as background music.

The lyrics are available here: undun lyrics « Search Results « Okayplayer

A short movie made for the album (featuring 90-120 second snippets of 4 songs)


The first single:


The first three movements of the album ending suite:

The Roots – “Redford”/”Possibility”/”Will To Power” (Stereogum Premiere) - Stereogum


Three more snippets:
The Roots: undun | KevinNottingham.com | The Underground Hip Hop Authority | Hip Hop Music, Videos & Reviews
Click to expand...
Excellent :D
 

Mockney

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It's a fantastic album. Completely the kind of Hip Hop I like. Interesting, adventurous and incredibly musical. The classical interludes are fantastic. Couldn't agree more with cinc here.
 

Mockney

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Is that downloadable anywhere cinc?

Also..

Sufjan Stevens.

I know cinc's mentioned him but it's worth presumping (my own mangled combination of presenting & bumping) for those who like this but aint herd the word. It's heavily inspired by Stevens, to the point of re-using the track Redford from his Michigan Album and naming the "character" Redford Stevens.

Stevens is one of those artists I always try and introduce to people, but which almost always comes off like this somehow..


I've no idea why. I think he's a hit and miss genius.
 

cinc

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Mockney said:
Is that downloadable anywhere cinc?

Also..

Sufjan Stevens.

I know cinc's mentioned him but it's worth presumping (my own mangled combination of presenting & bumping) for those who like this but aint herd the word. It's heavily inspired by Stevens, to the point of re-using the track Redford from his Michigan Album and naming the "character" Redford Stevens.

Stevens is one of those artists I always try and introduce to people, but which almost always comes off like this somehow..


I've no idea why. I think he's a hit and miss genius.
Click to expand...
I've only found him thanks to this album, but he's great. I stopped recommending music to friends bar one or two, they rarely enjoy what I do.

By the way, two performances from the Fallon show:

Tip the Scale (with parts of the Redford suite with Bilal, D.D. Jackson and the Metropolis Ensemble):

The Roots Play "Tip The Scale" From Their New Album 'undun' - Music - Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

The Other Side (with Bilal, him and Kirk Douglas (the guitarist) really gets going at the end):

Web Exclusive: The Roots Play "The Other Side" - Web Exclusives - Late Night with Jimmy Fallon
 

Mockney

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Heh, they're my two favorites off the album. I heard they played Lyin'Ass Bitch when Michelle Bachmann was on that show (Fallon) and ?uest got in a shit load of trouble from feminist groups..:lol:.Sounds harsh. I'd have done the same thing.
 

The_Red_Hope

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I'm not heavily into hip-hop but my word this is a great album. Have only heard "How i got over' from these fellas before this. Liking it all so far though.
 

cinc

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feck yeah, they added Budapest (the otherwise godawful Sziget fesztival) to their european touring schedule, august 9. Its been 5 years since I've seen them live (feck you, Fallon!) , so I'm properly pumped.

 

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adexkola said:
Very sad :(


One of my favorite tracks off what I consider one of their best albums, and Malik B just rips it.

May he rest in peace.
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Love this track too. Illadelph Halflife is one of my all time faves.

May he rest in peace.
 
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