The illiadelph halflive of The Roots is still going strong, even if it's being fueled by side projects and experimentation. Following up on their collab with John Legend, the (also) legendary Roots crew are putting out a new LP, a concept album functioning as "an existential re-telling of the short life of one Redford Stephens (1974-1999)." It's called undun and we've got the first single, "Make My", below.

The slow-jamming single features Big K.R.I.T., as well as the foremost voice of The Roots, Black Thought.



More thoughts on undun, the band's 13th studio effort, from ?uestlove:

"At this point in our career we'd like for our work to have a unifying theme, and an experiential quality. 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?"

undun:
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

undun is out 12/6 via Island Def Jam. Does anyone else feel like there are a lot of concept albums/characters we've suddenly got to deal with in the music sphere?

No word on the Mylo Xyloto/Redford Stephens crossover arc, but there may need to be some retcon involved.