Nina Simone's creepy-while-somehow-soothing voice is a perfect paint for the canvas that the string-heavy beat provides.
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Ahmir Questlove Thompson
The angular melody, dissonant background strings and Simone’s nervous, vibrato-laden voice establishes a menacing presence.
It manages to balance its weird orchestra breakdown with a rather contemporary beginning and ending.
Metropolis Ensemble joined The Roots on May 20, 2014 for a live performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to celebrate the Philadelphia hip-hop group’s newly released album “…And Then You Shoot Your Cousin,” which also features Metropolis artists and conductor Andrew Cyr. The performance, bathed in all white, included the album’s trip-hop “Never” with Canadian DJ A-Trak, Black Thought, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, and Raheem DeVaughn.
“Roots albums, no matter the landscape around them, always feel sturdy, firm—responsible, in the classic Gangstarr way.”
In “…And Then You Shoot Your Cousin,” The Roots prove their mastery of mixing high and low culture for diverse audiences. It’s a headier album, but one rife with significance.
“It’s a curious turn, but one that finds them as oddly whimsical and satisfying as ever.”
The musicians weren’t the same Roots band seen regularly on NBC’s “Tonight” show with Jimmy Fallon. They included the Metropolis Ensemble — the conductor Andrew Cyr, a string quartet and four singers — and the jazz pianist D. D. Jackson, who wrote dramatic, somberly dissonant arrangements for the ensemble.
All preconceived notions of ‘hip-hop’ are tossed out the window, as the transcendence of the sometimes one-dimensional genre is epitomized here.
Putting the record on the turntable is an immersive experience that I consider to be synonymous with hip hop as the music will not only radiate through your body but will also touch your soul.
In The Roots’ …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin, pianos and strings clash in explosions of third-stream jazz, French electro-acoustic pioneer Michel Chion brings noise, deep-blue tones vibrate like Miles Davis' Porgy and Bess.
It’s hard to deny the overall effect of this strange, smartly conceived album.
The Roots have total command of their combination of jazz-influenced hip-hop and social awareness.
The remainder of undun speaks through the instrumentals, where innocent pianos and violins turn into reckless percussions that fade into searing strings suggesting Redford has died.
The album has an instrumental coda… an elegiac string quartet and a last dissonant piano chord, an unpeaceful final rest.
Undun is also a mirror held up to present-day America, where ambitions are more likely to die than prosper. It's a downer, but timely and affecting, with moments of beauty.
A gorgeous neo-classical suite closes the album… If an album can be both chilling and beautiful at once, "Undun" is it.
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.