ATYSYC artwork
Album Rating System 3 1/2 out of 5 records
You can never really wrap your mind around creativity. Maybe because its not meant to be fully understood as opposed to being appreciated. But then, when creativity meets social awareness it becomes a statement. The Roots eleventh studio album, & Then You Shoot Your Cousin, is an intellectual posit of Hip-Hop’s downward spiral. It bleeds outside of mainstream music’s “assembly line” context, into a satirical look at millennial-Hip Hop’s nonsensical culture of debauchery and violence, and their relation to it.
The album starts off with a Nina Simone performance from Theme From The Middle Of The Night, with other complimenting interludes from jazz pianist, Mary Lou Williams, and French composer, Michel Chion, peppered throughout the album.
Black Thought, as usual, leads the vocals with his raspy, educated rap. This time he brings along MCs, Greg Porn and Dice Raw to accompany his revolutionary conquests.
Thought raps in The Dark (Trinity), “The law of gravity meets the law of averages/Ain’t no sense in attempting to civilize savages/Even though I wish I could be spared my embarrassment/I’m a nxgga, other nxggas pale in comparison/We out in Paris yet but still a nxgga perishing/No idea how much time’s left, fxck trying to cherish it/A life in times unchecked, now that’s American/Inherit the wind, pressure in everything.” Click here to read the full review.
