Now that their new gig on The Tonight Show is in full swing, the Roots have revealed details about their upcoming 11th studio album, And Then You Shoot Your Cousin. In a recent interview with XXL, Black Thought said that the album is almost finished.
"It's coming soon, hopefully sometime this spring," he told them. "It's another concept album in the spirit of undun, but it's not just about just one kind of character, we create quite a few different characters on this record. It's satire, but in that satire is an analysis of some of the stereotypes perpetuated in not only the hip-hop community, but in the community."
Thought spoke about the follow up to 2011's undun, which was centered around a character named Redford Stevens who served as an allegory for the plight of urban youth in America, saying that ATYSYC would not be centered on just one character.
"We created some of these characters that we kind of see," he continued. "We as artists, musicians, Philadelphians, New Yorkers, we as black men, we're familiar with very many of these characters, and we kind of introduce them to the rest of the world in a manner that makes them more easily understood than maybe seeing it."
Thought added that the 36(ish)-minute album is short enough to "digest in one sitting" but that it's "so dense that maybe in one sitting you'll listen to it and only listen to the piano and string arrangements, and then you'll listen to it again and you'll get into the actual words that are being said, and you'll listen again and get into some of the other musicality. There are many layers to this record, but it doesn't take place over very much time."
The album does not yet have an official release date but it will be put out via Def Jam Records. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below!
