&TYSYC

The Roots - & Then You Shoot Your Cousin

The album starts with a straightforward quote, Theme from Middle of the Night, Nina Simone. Not a sample, a quote. Then there's Never, with Patty Crash on the opening and closing verses, before and after Tariq Trotter's rap over just Questlove's drums. The song sets the tone, and maybe it was a decision based on the dark and bleak feeling to keep the set short. Trotter has described the album as a satire on violence in hip hop culture, and in American culture, generally.

There's more of those hip hop 'featuring' guest appearances than on other Roots albums, but the feel is consistent over the whole. Dark. Not oppressive, but weighty. It has the feel of the rainy cityscape setting of 'Bladerunner'.

The Dark (Trinity) is the longest song, something of a centrepiece for the album, a hub for the other numbers to revolve around. Raheem DeVaughn features on the closing two songs, The Unravelling, and Tomorrow, which provides a slightly more upbeat closing.

The Roots kick so many hip hop misconceptions and clichés so far into touch it's impossible not to love them to pieces. I don't think &TYKYC is going to be top of anyone's The Roots best of Listmania submission, but the more I listen the more I like it, and particularly the more I listen on headphones without distractions, the better.

This vegetarian lark...

...I said:

“Is giving me terrible wind.”

“But” said DLL, “how can you tell?”

“Look, it's worse than it was before.”

Apparently, it's just imagination. Apparently, meat takes longer to digest, produces more gas in the process, and I should now be feeling better and functioning better than ever before.

“And I feel knackered, too” I said.

“See?” said BLISS “nothing's changed at all.”