The Roots Enlist Big K.R.I.T., P.O.R.N., Phonte & Dice Raw For "undun"

by Steven J. Horowitz

The Philly crew also enlists Yia Yia and Pappou for their new album.

In anticipation of the December 6th release of their first-ever concept album, The Roots has announced that its first single off undun will be titled "Make My" featuring Big K.R.I.T.

Additionally, the group revealed that the album is a re-telling of Redford Stephens, illustrating "the intersection of free will and prescribed destiny as it plays out "on the corner. " Utilizing a reverse narrative arc, the album begins as the listener finds Redford disoriented--postmortem--and attempting to make sense of his former life. As he moves through its pivotal moments he begins to deconstruct all that has led to his (and our own) coming undun."

"At this point in our career we "d like for our work to have a unifying theme, and an experiential quality,” said Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson in a press release. “We "ve been intentionally making our albums shorter in length so that they can be experienced as a continuous work. The music is band-oriented with an eye on the moody cinematic. As a DJ, I am the King of playlists, but I don "t want our albums to feel like a playlist or a mixtape for that matter. We want to tell stories that work within the album format and we want the stories to be nuanced and useful to people. undun is the story of this kid who becomes criminal, but he wasn "t born criminal. He "s not the nouveau exotic primitive bug-eyed gunrunner like Tupac’s character Bishop in “Juice”... he "s actually thoughtful and is neither victim nor hero. Just some kid who begins to order his world in a way that makes the most sense to him at a given moment... At the end of the day... isn "t that what we all do?”