Black Thought recently revealed that The Roots‘ forthcoming 11th studio LP will be another concept album a la undun, which was constructed around the tragic life-narrative of troubled protagonist Redford Stevens. The new project will be the latest offering from the legendary crew following the critically-acclaimed Wise Up Ghost LP – The Roots’ collaborative project with Elvis Costello, which dropped this past fall. Questlove teased the title …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin (or &TYSYC for short) about a year ago. Now comes word that the project is closer to materializing than most might have thought. News of the project dropping this spring via Def Jam, conveniently follows the 15th anniversary of their seminal Things Fall Apart LP, which dropped in 1999 and netted a trophy for “You Got Me” at the 42nd Annual Grammy Awards. In a recent chop up session with XXL Magazine, Black Thought discussed the forthcoming project in detail:

“We’re close to being done on it, it’s coming soon, hopefully sometime this Spring,” Thought said. “It’s called And Then You Shoot Your Cousin. It’s conceptual; it’s another concept album in the spirit of undun, but it’s not just about just one kind of character, we create quite a few different characters in this record. It’s satire, but in that satire it’s an analysis of some of the stereotypes perpetuated in–not only the hip-hop community, but in the community.”

According to Thought, this project will revolve around an entire cast instead of on central character:

“We created some of these characters that we kind of see,” he continued. “We as artists, musicians, Philadelphians, New Yorkers, we as black men, we’re familiar with very many of these characters, and we kind of introduce them to the rest of the world in a manner that makes them more easily understood than maybe seeing it.”

While the album will be easily digestible, Thought promises the project that will continue to unfold over time.

“Hopefully you’ll get something new from it every time you listen to it, you’ll hone in on something different,” Thought said. “It’s short enough to do that, to take in, to digest in one sitting, so to speak. I think right now it’s at maybe 34 minutes; there may be one or two musical things added on to the record that I know is the record at this point. But I don’t think it will be any longer than 36 or 37 minutes in its entirety. So in that, it’s short enough to digest, but it’s gonna be dense. So dense that maybe in one sitting you’ll listen to it and only listen to the piano and string arrangements, and then you’ll listen to it again and you’ll get into the actual words that are being said, and you’ll listen again and get into some of the other musicality. There’s very many layers to this record, but it doesn’t take place over very much time.”

Stay tuned for more as details emerge. Check the full article via XXL.