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Dec 5, 2011Musically, Undun flows easier and slower than any other Roots album.
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Dec 6, 2011This isn't the Roots' most accessible album, and it's definitely their most downbeat, but it comes from a place that isn't always easy to dwell.
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Dec 6, 2011Despite its various faults, undun is righteously solid.
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Dec 6, 2011Unfortunately, Black Thought's skilled but stolid rapping adds nothing new to the idiom [of the morally ambiguous gangster tale]. Sonically, though, undun is a knockout.
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Dec 6, 2011With the tight, concise, ferociously focused Undun, however, the immensity of the project's ambition is matched by its seamless, masterful execution.
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Dec 6, 2011The Roots work hard and play hard on undun, but there's not enough pleasure to balance out Thought's business-like, consummately bland reading of the character who's supposed to bring the entire album to life.
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Dec 6, 2011undun is a brilliant reminder of the power of the emcee as storyteller, the possibility of 40 minutes of music lending itself to a thoughtful character and plot.
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Dec 5, 2011All told, the story undun tells is sometimes chilling, often thrilling, and always illuminating.
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Nov 30, 2011The Roots have always been at their best expressing quiet desperation and spinning old-school tales of struggling upward.
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Dec 5, 2011If it's not as immediately galvanizing as, say, Rising Down, it lingers.
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Dec 2, 2011The most cohesive LP in at least five years and its darkest, most urgent, most intense work to date.
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Jan 4, 2012The listener need be an equally astute one.
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Dec 1, 2011If any rap group could pull off a project this unwieldy, it's the Roots, and they make it seem effortless.
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Dec 5, 2011It's a downer, but timely and affecting, with moments of beauty.
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Dec 12, 2011In some ways the album works better as a slightly blemished and broken piece, because like its protagonist it exits quietly while still leaving so much to say, and it's those pieces of work that weeks later are still being debated over that stand the true test of time.
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Dec 1, 2011The Roots' 13th album may be their best.
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Jan 5, 2012The Roots manage to craft another interesting hip-hop experiment with undun.
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Dec 21, 2011The album is complete in itself. It's just 39 minutes, made brief to be listened to as a whole.
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Jan 3, 2012The Roots are the best hip-hop band today and ever, no questions asked, and Undun is Black Thought's greatest mark.
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Dec 1, 2011The result is a remarkable display of creative unity and a stellar masterpiece sitting alongside the group's best work.
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Dec 12, 2011It's the broader story through which Undun gains its strength; through the musings and rants of Black Thought and Dice Raw (who, this time around, has near as large a presence as the group's leader).
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Dec 6, 2011It's both bleak and unexpectedly beautiful.
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Jan 3, 2012[An] excellent record that anyone who wants to hear the graceful way by which hip-hop should age should add to their collections right away.
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Dec 2, 2011The music is astounding, threading erudite raps through ghetto soul jams and panoramic orchestral interludes.
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Dec 14, 2011Black Thought comes as brutish as ever, and their now-standard cast of collaborators (P.O.R.N. and Dice Raw) sound more at ease over these lanky beats than they did on more combustible previous efforts.
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Dec 5, 2011This is a work to prove that they could do it, and they've done it tenfold.
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Dec 20, 2011If one can express disappointment in undun, it's that it sets out to tell a story and tells it well, but delivers a short story or a novella where fans of The Roots would have undoubtedly preferred a full length novel.
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Dec 2, 2011If an album can be both chilling and beautiful at once, Undun is it.
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Dec 6, 2011A concept album with an equally heavy focus on musicianship and rhymes, undun fantastically transports into the tragic narrative.
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Dec 6, 2011What I get from the album as a whole isn't a feel for the fictional Redford Stephens. It's the pop refrains, Euro orchestrations, and simplified drumming absorbed by a sound that shows no sign of standing pat.
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Dec 8, 2011undun clocks in at well under an hour, Questlove said he wants it to be "ADD proof", a running time that also magnifies the importance of the third of the album that's purely instrumental. It's on these vocal-free tracks that The Roots truly show what they're capable of.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 154 out of 169
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Mixed: 4 out of 169
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Negative: 11 out of 169
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Dec 31, 2011
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Dec 6, 2011
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Dec 6, 2011