Review - "Undun" by A Band Called Roots

Grade: A

What I like best about Undun is it's a concept album that pretty much works. The concept is similar to Lupe's The Cool (a gangster guy dies), but The Roots don't hit us over the head with the story or the concept at all. Instead, they let the energy of the music tell the story above plot and characters. I like The Cool (it was the last good Lupe album maybe we'll ever get), but I think that Undun works much better as a concept album. And, I think it works better than most concept albums (especially the recent Childish Gambino failure CAMP).

Undun's story is vague, but that's on purpose. Going into the album, it's kinda like The Brief And Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao. We know Redford is gonna die. In fact, The Roots Tarantino the story and have him die in the very beginning. We also know Redford got killed because he was caught up in...something. Crime of somekind, but The Roots never straight up tell us what Redford was doing or who killed him or how he got killed. Those details aren't important. The Roots tell Redford's story by painting a picture with a bunch of songs and leave the rest up to our imagination. Which makes this album really powerful I think. In other words, this is "show don't tell" applied to the concept album. If that makes sense.

The album begins with death and ends with (what I assume) is birth. "Dun," "Sleep" and Make My (which has a great Big K.R.I.T guest spot) focus on Redford's death. "Dun" is like post-death, "Sleep" is the moment of death, and "Make My" is Redford dying and accepting it.

The Sufjan Stevens-featuring classical music at the end of the album I think is Redford's birth since there are no lyrics and it's just this beautiful music. Redford can't speak, but he's coming into the world and things are beautiful since he's just being born. The album's start (while being about death) is equally beautiful. I like that a lot.

In between the birth and death we get a lot of songs about anger and desperation and few beautiful moments. The only thing close to a beautiful moment between Redford's birth and death is Stomp which is kind of the album's Hustler's Ambition I think. It's maybe the voice in "Redford's" head telling him to grind or something. Plus, "Stomp" is later on the album so it's when Redford's young and hasn't gotten jaded yet.

Since all the raps are first person it makes this kind of an everyman story, Prufrock-style. It's not just Black Thought playing Redford, but all the rappers on the album play him. He's all of us. On The Otherside Bilal belts out "We're all on a journey."

This album isn't just about Redford's struggle through life, but maybe everybody's. We're all born, we all work hard, we all die. But, rather than get cynical about that last sentence, The Roots have, Buddha-like, found the beauty in all of those things and they show us that beauty with Undun.

I feel like Undun, How I Got Over and Rising Down are almost a trilogy. Rising Down is about facing adversity and getting angry. So many songs are militant and ready for war on that album. There's not much introspection.

How I Got Over opens with "A Peace Of Light" following the very fucking dark Rising Down album (although Rising Down does end on a positive note with Rising Up, so maybe that's the transition to How I Got Over?). Undun is like an alternate ending to Rising Down. It's about facing adversity and losing. Redford dies. But, his story is just as moving as the triumphant How I Got Over.

Finally, I think Dice Raw and Porn have come A LONG WAY in their vocals and Dice's singing is fucking top notch. Porn is almost a new Malik B on Undun since he's on a ton of songs and his flow and delivery compliment Black Thought really well. This is as much Dice and Porn's album as it is The Roots'.