Being Jimmy Fallon’s house band certainly hasn’t left the Roots creatively fallow. Over two remarkable decades, Philly’s finest have crafted 10 good-to-great 
albums on the foundations of tight live instruments and sonically coherent sensibilities
—undun marks their ascension into the realm of the artful. Tracing the death of the fictional young gangster Redford Stephens, Black Thought is our lyrical Tiresias guiding us through a piano-dominated wasteland. The Roots paint no pretense of hope in these abject streets; undun’s shuffling funereal beats, crispy drum-pocked bullet sprays, heart-heavy raps, and a gorgeous orchestral coda affirm a goodness of intention in the face of it. undun is theatrical, bold, poetic—the album of the year.
This article appears in Dec 22-28, 2011.
