How Late Night Gave The Roots Artistic Freedom (And How It's Paying Off) — forbes.com

Have you noticed the Roots have gotten weirder lately? Consider this, a Grammy winner and breakout hit from 1999: Now contrast that song to what you hear here, about seventeen minutes into their newest record, hilariously titled …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin: And this critic happens to love the difference unabashedly, never more so than on this new record. Here’s why: As a devotee to the concept album (I have a soft spot for British Prog—sue me), I find this record satisfies the weight of that subgenre, delivering a narrative, trajectory, and scope that can be felt in the very bones of the music. True, the album doesn’t conform to the standard template of harmonic loops repeating over long periods of time. And because of this, I suspect, come the charges that this record isn’t “Hip Hop” enough. However, each section of music builds upon the previous one with musical acuity, achieving peaks, valleys, and peaks again; because this experience is not only intensely musical, but short as well (the album is under thirty five minutes), the record provides an excellent Prog-like journey without meandering through catacombs of self-indulgence.

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