Roots

At this point, it’s tempting to thank the Roots for even trying.

After all, Undun marks their eleventh trip to the studio. Their canonical breakout, Things Fall Apart, is now 12 years old. They’ve made a play for the mainstream (2004’s The Tipping Point) and a satisfying return to their lane (2006’s Game Theory). They’ve got the steadiest job in hip-hop as the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, plus the respect of just about everyone in the game. Frontman ?uestlove has seen and heard everything, possessed of an encyclopedic memory and a knack for storytelling—traits that will one day cement the band’s legacy in the minds of critics.

And yet: here they are with the story of the fictional Redford Stephens, played back-to-front like an Eternal Sunshine of the Repentant Hustler, replete with a Sufjan Stevens-assisted, four-movement closing piano suite. Next to nearly anything in their catalog, and especially its most recent predecessor How I Got Over, Undun is relentlessly fatalistic. And, as concept albums go, impressively concise.

“Sleep” opens the narrative of Undun, with Stephens (voiced, first and foremost, by Black Thought) concerned about his legacy from beyond the grave: “There I go, from a man to a memory/Damn, I wonder if my fam will remember me.” The novelty is striking, and the cautionary gangster parable-in-reverse is most affecting on the album’s first half, when Stephens’ high life is tainted by self-awareness of his impending demise. On “Make My,” guest Big K.R.I.T. looks at the writing on the wall with more than a hint of regret: “Addicted to the green, if I don’t ball I’ll get the shakes/I’d give it all for peace of mind, for heaven’s sake.” The lyrical focus on Stephens’ resignation to his fate matches the mournfulness and restraint of ?uest’s backing tracks; the Roots loosen up only for the airy “Kool On,” the height of Stephens’ ‘hood-dreams indulgence, and for the militant stomp of “Stomp.”

Undun’s creativity and cohesion unravel toward the end of the album, and the chronological beginning of Stephens’ story. Dice-Raw, a valuable contributor elsewhere, doesn’t do himself any favors with his cornball hook on “Lighthouse,” but the problem here isn’t just cosmetic. For all Black Thought’s precision, the themes of inner-city hardship feel rote and obligatory. What makes Redford so compelling isn’t his dime-a-dozen come-up, its his perspective toward his decline and fall.

?uest and Black Thought seem to recognize the limits of their concept. Leaving out ambient opener “Dun” and the wordless closing suite, Undun comes in at just over half an hour, by far the shortest studio album the Roots have ever released. Appropriately so—the ingenuity lies not in fully fleshing out their character, but in the Roots’ dynamic approach toward his undoing. It’s the diminutive, sobering flip side to hip-hop’s oft-rehearsed, archetypal gangster epic—a triumph of novelty, not of scope.