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Editorial Reviews
2011 release, the first conceptually-based album from The Roots. Undun quickly reaffirms the creativity of the outfit that are notorious for pushing the envelope. The album's first single is "Make My" featuring Big K.I.R.T. Undun is an existential re-telling of the short life of one Redford Stephens (1974-1999). Through the use of emotives and Redford's internal dialogues the album seeks to illustrate the intersection of free will and prescribed destiny as it plays out `on the corner'. Utilizing a reverse narrative arc, the album begins as the listener finds Redford disoriented--postmortem--and attempting to make sense of his former life. As he moves through its pivotal moments he begins to deconstruct all that has led to his (and our own) coming undun.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
74 of 76 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
Dear Music Appreciators,
I come to this album as one who knows nothing of The Roots beyond the few dozen times I've been flipping channels and decided to watch a bit of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Based on their work on that show I knew they were an incredibly talented and versatile band, and this, their latest studio album, is simply further evidence of that fact.
Unlike many of their more popular peers, this is not simply a vehicle for a few hot singles with some filler in between. This is a real "record" in that old school sense of the word - a collection of carefully crafted songs that go well together and are meant to be experienced in order, one after another. This is the kind of record that would sound best on a record player, or at least on a Discman with some big ol' headphones while you're pounding the city pavement or shooting down a subway line.
On their late night television gig The Roots are a band that flies high above the anchors of musical genre and this album is no exception. This is not really just a rap album or a hip-hop album or a soul album or a funk album or a pop album or a rock album, it's...well, it's a ROOTS album. And it's something of a concept album, centered around one Redford Stephens, who happened into a life of crime in inner-city New York and died at twenty-five.
The album opens with Redford dead, moves backwards to explore his story, and ends with four short, hopped-up. classical sounding instrumental tracks - a sort of "Redford Stephens Suite" to memorialize the fallen character.
While there are rhymes and beats to please even the most primitive music fans, this is essentially rap-infused, art-flavored hip-hop for smart people, and as such it succeeds beautifully, so why not buy this now and plant The Roots latest album in your mind to see if it will grow a little?
Sincerely,
Constant Listener
I come to this album as one who knows nothing of The Roots beyond the few dozen times I've been flipping channels and decided to watch a bit of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Based on their work on that show I knew they were an incredibly talented and versatile band, and this, their latest studio album, is simply further evidence of that fact.
Unlike many of their more popular peers, this is not simply a vehicle for a few hot singles with some filler in between. This is a real "record" in that old school sense of the word - a collection of carefully crafted songs that go well together and are meant to be experienced in order, one after another. This is the kind of record that would sound best on a record player, or at least on a Discman with some big ol' headphones while you're pounding the city pavement or shooting down a subway line.
On their late night television gig The Roots are a band that flies high above the anchors of musical genre and this album is no exception. This is not really just a rap album or a hip-hop album or a soul album or a funk album or a pop album or a rock album, it's...well, it's a ROOTS album. And it's something of a concept album, centered around one Redford Stephens, who happened into a life of crime in inner-city New York and died at twenty-five.
The album opens with Redford dead, moves backwards to explore his story, and ends with four short, hopped-up. classical sounding instrumental tracks - a sort of "Redford Stephens Suite" to memorialize the fallen character.
While there are rhymes and beats to please even the most primitive music fans, this is essentially rap-infused, art-flavored hip-hop for smart people, and as such it succeeds beautifully, so why not buy this now and plant The Roots latest album in your mind to see if it will grow a little?
Sincerely,
Constant Listener
29 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
The Roots tenure in the music business spans much of hip hop history from the late 80s, through the 'golden age' of hip hop, to its current state of affairs. Each of their albums has a different tone, and this is by far the darkest and most poetic. A 'concept album,' undun tells the story of a poor kid who thinks he's making the right decisions, but gets drawn deeper into the drug game until he's killed. Yet the story is told in reverse, kind of like Pulp Fiction.
As a Roots fan since Do You Want More, this album inspires me. Their musicianship is perhaps better than it has ever been. Quest and Co. are experimenting with lush classical tones amid the boom-bap-blip, especially on the album's closing suite of four instrumental songs. The MCing is inspired. Black Thought is ill, and more precise than ever. Great guest spots from the likes of Greg Porn, as usual, and haunting hooks and verses by Dice Raw.
As much as it inspires me, it also depresses me. That's the point. The Roots are making real art here, a work with a poignant message that can be interpreted on many different levels. For me, they are telling a dark story that contains a message about life's value and how humans cannot survive faced with only bad and worse choices.
The stand out track for me is Sleep, which marks death. The music is so weird and hard hitting. Almost like something from Portishead circa the mid-90s. The lyrics and the imagery of falling leaves create a mood of bittersweet release.
I'd recommend this album to anyone who likes hip hop but yearns for something beyond the sophomoric slogans that dominate the genre these days. It might be dispiriting thematically, but simple pop doesn't wake people up.
As a Roots fan since Do You Want More, this album inspires me. Their musicianship is perhaps better than it has ever been. Quest and Co. are experimenting with lush classical tones amid the boom-bap-blip, especially on the album's closing suite of four instrumental songs. The MCing is inspired. Black Thought is ill, and more precise than ever. Great guest spots from the likes of Greg Porn, as usual, and haunting hooks and verses by Dice Raw.
As much as it inspires me, it also depresses me. That's the point. The Roots are making real art here, a work with a poignant message that can be interpreted on many different levels. For me, they are telling a dark story that contains a message about life's value and how humans cannot survive faced with only bad and worse choices.
The stand out track for me is Sleep, which marks death. The music is so weird and hard hitting. Almost like something from Portishead circa the mid-90s. The lyrics and the imagery of falling leaves create a mood of bittersweet release.
I'd recommend this album to anyone who likes hip hop but yearns for something beyond the sophomoric slogans that dominate the genre these days. It might be dispiriting thematically, but simple pop doesn't wake people up.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:MP3 Music|Amazon Verified Purchase
The Roots continue to prove that they are the most consistent music group out there. Even some of their older albums that were perhaps not as good as we might have liked, were still leaps and bounds better than seemingly 80% of the other music out there.
In my time of doing reviews on my blog I've only given four albums a perfect five rating. The Roots' album from last year, How I Got Over, their collaboration with John Legend "Wake Up", Hidden Beach Unwrapped Volume 1 and "The Carnivale" by Wyclef Jean, which remains today one of my top 10 albums that I've ever heard in my life.
Today The Roots get the fifth 5 Rating (and third album to get that that they are involved with). I've been a fan of the Roots for a long time, having come to them via D'Angelo who is my favorite artist. I heard some collaborations that he had done with them in some live recordings that I have and was just hooked.
Here you have a rap group that's an actual BAND. They play their instruments, and they play them well. It's not often you come across a hip hop band, but the Roots have been putting it down for hip hop in a serious way for years now and show no signs of creative drop off.
Never more clear than on their newest album "UnDun" which in a first for the legendary Roots Crew, is a concept album. Undun chronicles the life and death of Redford Stephens who embraces some bad choices in his life and ends up paying the ultimate price for it, and tells said story in reverse.
The album begins with his dying and works it's way back to the beginning of the story -- the end of the album. Clocking in at just a shade under 40 minutes it's a fairly short album, however it's an amazing piece of work that seems to alternate between being staggeringly beautiful and hauntingly depressing at various points throughout.
One thing that I loved about How I Got Over was their utilizing feature appearances by artists that many perhaps would not have heard, who listen to the Roots regularly. Artists like The Dirty Projectors, Monsters of Folk, Joanna Newsome and STS.
This album also features some of these indie rock artists and once again I'm kind of blown away by the incredible sound that has been made with the Roots collaborating with these artists.
In fact one of my favorite tracks on here is "Sleep" which features a singer named Aaron Livingston. I have never heard him before, but he has a line in there that when I heard it I just sat back in awe, dumbstruck by the implications of it and the very idea of it.
Something so seemingly simple, and yet complex and deep at the same time. One of those things you'll end up thinking about later after you've put the album away to go to sleep yourself.
I love the idea behind this concept album. The idea of chronicling a man who for lack of a bad choices might have ended up with a whole different (and perhaps much longer) life, and made it out of the environment that he found himself trapped in.
I've thought back before to mistakes I've made, decisions I've made and how it influenced my life and how it impacted my ending up in the very room I sit right now writing this review.
If I had done things differently, would I be here right now? Would I have ended up in another state? Perhaps gone to college, got a helluva job? Met someone, settled down, had kids, and the stereotypical American Dream?
Or was I always destined to end up where I'm at now? I thought about that as I listened to Undun, because it made me wonder whether Redford was doomed from the beginning. Whether his ending was predetermined from jump street and that he realized that and simply embraced what he felt was his destiny.
It's definitely an interesting conversation piece, I think. And that, ultimately, is what separates The Roots from your average hip hop artists out there. The Roots stay coming correct with their intelligent and introspective works, while many others tend to focus on more materialistic gains.
Unfortunately too many people would rather Watch The Throne, rather than get their heads into some real solid intelligent hip hop music. And that's sad, but unfortunately a part of life.
As the album ends, it has it's final piece, a cover of singer Sufjan Stevens' song Redford, split into four "movements", and tell the "beginning" of Stephen's life.
The first part is Sufjan himself on the piano, followed by a string quartet interpreting the song. After that you have Roots' drummer Questlove and pianist D.D. Jackson going to work, and then the final movement, which actually represents the beginning of Redford Stephen's life.
As I'm listening right now to the final four tracks that form this sort of orchestral movement it's absolutely stunningly beautiful! I mean I've read online where there were some who heard the album and didn't like the final four tracks and felt that it would have been better ending on the 10th track.
I think those who feel this way are missing the whole idea of a concept album, and how every piece fits. Every piece tells a part of the story. Every piece serves a purpose. And personally, I actually thought I'd be moved to tears by the 12th track "Possibility". It was amazing in a way that words can't express.
To sum up, this is yet again, another potentially classic album by a group that we've come to expect excellence from. However just because we have grown to expect this type of brilliance, doesn't negate or diminish the quality of this album.
Some of the usual suspects show up for appearances including Dice Raw, Phonte, P.O.R.N. and Truck North, as well as Big K.R.I.T. who has a great future ahead of him in hip hop.
I also liked some of the vocalists on here including Bilal, Livingston and even Mercedes Martinez & Tracy Moore, of Jazzyfatnastees fame, who contributed the vocals to "I Remember" which is outstanding!
All in all, if you like good hip hop music, if you like good MUSIC period, you need to do yourself a favor and pick this up!
In my time of doing reviews on my blog I've only given four albums a perfect five rating. The Roots' album from last year, How I Got Over, their collaboration with John Legend "Wake Up", Hidden Beach Unwrapped Volume 1 and "The Carnivale" by Wyclef Jean, which remains today one of my top 10 albums that I've ever heard in my life.
Today The Roots get the fifth 5 Rating (and third album to get that that they are involved with). I've been a fan of the Roots for a long time, having come to them via D'Angelo who is my favorite artist. I heard some collaborations that he had done with them in some live recordings that I have and was just hooked.
Here you have a rap group that's an actual BAND. They play their instruments, and they play them well. It's not often you come across a hip hop band, but the Roots have been putting it down for hip hop in a serious way for years now and show no signs of creative drop off.
Never more clear than on their newest album "UnDun" which in a first for the legendary Roots Crew, is a concept album. Undun chronicles the life and death of Redford Stephens who embraces some bad choices in his life and ends up paying the ultimate price for it, and tells said story in reverse.
The album begins with his dying and works it's way back to the beginning of the story -- the end of the album. Clocking in at just a shade under 40 minutes it's a fairly short album, however it's an amazing piece of work that seems to alternate between being staggeringly beautiful and hauntingly depressing at various points throughout.
One thing that I loved about How I Got Over was their utilizing feature appearances by artists that many perhaps would not have heard, who listen to the Roots regularly. Artists like The Dirty Projectors, Monsters of Folk, Joanna Newsome and STS.
This album also features some of these indie rock artists and once again I'm kind of blown away by the incredible sound that has been made with the Roots collaborating with these artists.
In fact one of my favorite tracks on here is "Sleep" which features a singer named Aaron Livingston. I have never heard him before, but he has a line in there that when I heard it I just sat back in awe, dumbstruck by the implications of it and the very idea of it.
Something so seemingly simple, and yet complex and deep at the same time. One of those things you'll end up thinking about later after you've put the album away to go to sleep yourself.
I love the idea behind this concept album. The idea of chronicling a man who for lack of a bad choices might have ended up with a whole different (and perhaps much longer) life, and made it out of the environment that he found himself trapped in.
I've thought back before to mistakes I've made, decisions I've made and how it influenced my life and how it impacted my ending up in the very room I sit right now writing this review.
If I had done things differently, would I be here right now? Would I have ended up in another state? Perhaps gone to college, got a helluva job? Met someone, settled down, had kids, and the stereotypical American Dream?
Or was I always destined to end up where I'm at now? I thought about that as I listened to Undun, because it made me wonder whether Redford was doomed from the beginning. Whether his ending was predetermined from jump street and that he realized that and simply embraced what he felt was his destiny.
It's definitely an interesting conversation piece, I think. And that, ultimately, is what separates The Roots from your average hip hop artists out there. The Roots stay coming correct with their intelligent and introspective works, while many others tend to focus on more materialistic gains.
Unfortunately too many people would rather Watch The Throne, rather than get their heads into some real solid intelligent hip hop music. And that's sad, but unfortunately a part of life.
As the album ends, it has it's final piece, a cover of singer Sufjan Stevens' song Redford, split into four "movements", and tell the "beginning" of Stephen's life.
The first part is Sufjan himself on the piano, followed by a string quartet interpreting the song. After that you have Roots' drummer Questlove and pianist D.D. Jackson going to work, and then the final movement, which actually represents the beginning of Redford Stephen's life.
As I'm listening right now to the final four tracks that form this sort of orchestral movement it's absolutely stunningly beautiful! I mean I've read online where there were some who heard the album and didn't like the final four tracks and felt that it would have been better ending on the 10th track.
I think those who feel this way are missing the whole idea of a concept album, and how every piece fits. Every piece tells a part of the story. Every piece serves a purpose. And personally, I actually thought I'd be moved to tears by the 12th track "Possibility". It was amazing in a way that words can't express.
To sum up, this is yet again, another potentially classic album by a group that we've come to expect excellence from. However just because we have grown to expect this type of brilliance, doesn't negate or diminish the quality of this album.
Some of the usual suspects show up for appearances including Dice Raw, Phonte, P.O.R.N. and Truck North, as well as Big K.R.I.T. who has a great future ahead of him in hip hop.
I also liked some of the vocalists on here including Bilal, Livingston and even Mercedes Martinez & Tracy Moore, of Jazzyfatnastees fame, who contributed the vocals to "I Remember" which is outstanding!
All in all, if you like good hip hop music, if you like good MUSIC period, you need to do yourself a favor and pick this up!
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Track 6 is the Best
The Other Side is the best song on this album & it's just OK. What's w/the Roots making these depressing, suicidal sounding albums lately? Read more
Published 1 month ago by Jabari Edmondson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dope dope dope
I don't really know how else to describe this. I love this band, I have seen them in concert a few times and they never disappoint. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Kylor2
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funky jazzy-The Incredible Roots Crew!
What are you waiting for? Buy it! You can't go wrong here. My only issue with Undun is it's too short. Stop wasting your time reading reviews. Buy it...Undun is good for your soul.
Published 2 months ago by Lee W. Dabagia
5.0 out of 5 stars
C
This is another hit from The Roots. I listen to this and HIGO on a continuous loop at work almost daily. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Latasha Young
4.0 out of 5 stars
Another great effort from the Roots!
Many of the Roots longtime fans haven't appreciated the direction they've headed in since "How I Got Over," but I'm one of them. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jeff Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unstoppable
The roots killed it again. Maybe not as good as How I Got Over but still really good. This album felt a little more laid back.
Published 4 months ago by Jack Diddly
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good album
I buy all their albums. Didn't realize the hip opera format, so not as many tracks as usual, but the actual songs are great. Got in sale for cheap, so definitely worth the money
Published 5 months ago by Roots fan
5.0 out of 5 stars
An album, not a collection of songs
You can't get the full picture by listening to just an individual track. This is an album that needs to be listened to all the way through without interuption to get the full... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Richard E Jackson
3.0 out of 5 stars
Undun
As a longtime, dedicated Roots fan I've noticed a pattern lately; release one near perfect LP, then release a haphazard, slightly lackluster effort as a followup. Read more
Published 7 months ago by WILLIE A YOUNG II
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ridiculous
Crazy, how much quality music the group puts out. I don't know how they top each album but they manage to do it!
Published 7 months ago by Chris
Listmania!
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