“Undun” is due out in December.
The Roots, who have been enjoying a residency as the house band for “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” for the past two and a half years, are releasing a new album this December. Now fully in the comfort zone of the show’s regularity, they are taking the opportunity to push this new record a little further in terms of exploring their boundaries.
Drummer ?uestlove told MTV News that the record, titled “undun,” will be a concept album. “I guess having the security of the Fallon job gives us room to do more experimentation and stuff that we always wanted to do without the fear of, ‘Oh my god, what’s our plan B? Now our day job is our plan B.”
Several Roots records in the past have followed a theme, most particularly the Chinua Achebe inspired album, “Things Fall Apart,” but “undun” may prove to be the group’s most ambitious conceptually. “It is our first concept album. Mostly, our albums are thematic, but this is our first album in which it’s an actual narrative, so sort of like a movie without visuals; kind of like a storybook record.”
Concept albums are a tricky endeavor, and something usually best left to prog rockers, but the idea of a hip hop album following a story line has certainly worked well in the past, such as the Deltron 3030 record and “Prince Among Thieves” by Prince Paul. “Undun” will be out on Def Jam Records on December 6th.
