On their major label debut, 1995s Do You Want More??!!!??!, right out of the gate, you are told you are “about to witness some organic hip-hop jazz.” Nearly twenty years later, Philadelphia’s The Roots arrive at their 11th proper studio album, and there is little hip-hop or jazz to be found, and there is practically nothing resembling something “organic.”
Since peaking creatively in 1999 with their definitive statement, Things Fall Apart, The Roots have been maddeningly uneven in their efforts. 2002 saw the release of Phrenology, an unfocused, cumbersome album that tried to balance their art leanings with accessible “modern hip-hop” sounds. After that, it was kind of all downhill as far as the quality of their output, the constant record label shifts (finally landing on Def Jam of all places in 2006), and line up changes—long gone are the days of Leonard Hubbard sulking over his bass guitar with a chew stick in his mouth. The only constants in the band now are lead MC Black Thought, and behind the drum kit, his Afro-ed counterpart, Questlove.
And Then You Shoot Your Cousin, the latest effort from Philly’s finest picks up where 2011’s remarkable Undun left off—it’s a concept album. But whereas Undun told a cohesive story, tracking a character from death back through all of the poor decisions that got them there—And Then You Shoot Your Cousin is so distracted and irregular that it makes an album like Phrenology look like a Top 40 pop album.
The Roots, as a band, continue to cash some of the easiest paychecks right now as the house band for Jimmy Fallon, moving with him from “Late Night” to an hour earlier on “The Tonight Show.” They rehearse pretty much all day, so the opportunity has allowed them to become better musicians, and provides them with a stable enough income to record an album like this, that certainly isn’t for everyone.
The Wikipedia article for ATYSYC claims that the concept behind it is a satirical look at violence in our society. It’s probably a good thing that I cheated and read the Wikipedia for it, because that was not what I took away from listening to it. The major themes that stood out to me, anyway, are spirituality—the absence and fear of God, as well as the idea of sinning and forgiveness.
And hey that’s all well and good, but the last time I checked, The Roots touted themselves as a hip-hop band. And there’s, like, none of that on this album. It doesn’t sound like the work of a band at all—the production, while impressive sounding, strips away the feeling of a group of people in a room working together on this—specifically with the “old timey” production values on “Black Rock.”
And it really seems like the whole rapping thing is a total afterthought. Even the title itself—And Then You Shoot Your Cousin—is borrowed from a KRS-One lyric, seemingly in an effort to remind people that, “Hey, guys, we rap, alright?”
Clocking in at barely over a half hour, and consisting of 11 tracks total, the truth is that this is like a glorified EP by the time you remove the obligatory intro track, and two segues that are tucked into the sequence. I mean, you don’t even know this is a Roots album until, like two minutes into the second track, “Never,” when Black Thought finally decides to show up and start rapping. And then there are some songs where no members of the band are performing—“The Coming” features singer Mercedes Martinez backed by frenetic piano and strings, while the album’s closing track, the upbeat “Tomorrow” includes vocalist Raheem DeVaughn.
A plus on And Then You Shoot Your Cousin are the guest appearances by Dice Raw, who has been working with The Roots since 1995, bringing a refreshing sense of urgency and occasional desperation to his delivery that juxtaposes against Black Thought’s more reserved, thoughtful cadence. Since this is a “concept album” of sorts, as with the lyrical content on Undun, they’re written in character, which can be a little surprising given how high-brow Black Thought usually is—he drops some heavy misogyny on “When The People Cheer,” then later, flosses about riches of a hip-hop lifestyle on “The Dark (Trinity.)”
And Then You Shoot Your Cousin certainly isn’t a bad record, but in the end, it’s so uneven, the thought behind it comes off as a little underdeveloped. In a concept album situation, it’s difficult to pick out pieces of a whole and identify, like, one or two songs that are standouts from the rest. But in the case of a record like Undun, that was something you could actually do. Here, on ATYSYC, you can’t. There’s really nothing that shines brighter. It’s an oppressively dark and claustrophobic affair, and if it’s an effort to remind listeners that they are first and foremost a band and not just props on “The Tonight Show,” it’s a bit of an inaccessible and unfriendly notice. Even on records like Things Fall Apart and Phrenology, The Roots were able to maintain somewhat of a sense of humor and not take themselves this seriously, and maybe it’s time for them to revisit that mindset.
Rating: 2/5