P(AllHipHop News) Despite a busy schedule of performing as the house band on the Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and also taking part in the Pre-Emmy Awards jam session, the Philadelphia based hip-hop band, The Roots, are releasing a new album on Island Def Jam.
The project, which drops on December 6th this year, is titled undun.
The release is the first conceptual album for The Roots.
The album’s first single will feature Big K.R.I.T. and will be available on iTunes November 1st.
undun is a re-telling of the short life of one Redford Stephens (1974-1999).
Using Redford’s dialogues, the legendary hip-hop group attempts to tell how free will and destiny affects the life ‘on the corner’ of Redford Stephens.
Adding to the hype of the new concept album, The Roots also announced that they will be peforming in New York City on November 29 and 30, as well as December 5 at the Highline Ballroom.
“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, 40. “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?”
TRACKLISTING:
1) Sleep
2) Make My
3) One Time
4) Kool On
5) The Jump
6) Stomp
7) Lighthouse
8) I Remember
9) Tip The Scale
10) Redford