Soulful hip-hop act, The Roots take a bleak turn on their concept album Undun , which tells the story of Redford Stevens, a man living and dying in urban poverty.
The music is a compelling blend of a warm, yet dreary Curtis Mayfield and John Coltrane that works perfectly, however it's the lyrics that fall flat on their face. Black Thought's words should bring a heartbeat to the character of Redford but never does and the concept of the album becomes boring really quick.
The band themselves are at some of their best composing and playing here, it's just Thought's lyrics that pull it down a bit too much. Normally lyrics wouldn't be such a problem, however if you're going to do something conceptual you should at least make it lyrically interesting.
3 Sufjan Stevens nods out of 5
Songs Of Note: One Time; undun "short"
No comments:
Post a Comment