The Roots Detail New Album

The Roots have shared some details regarding their upcoming Def Jam album. The project is called undun and is a concept album that follows the life of Redford Stephens. The album is slated to be released on December 6th and is the group's first concept album.

“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. “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?”

The Roots will be performing at the Highline Ballroom in New York City in late November to promote the project. undun's first single features Big K.R.I.T. and will be released November 1st.