The Roots - And Then You Shoot Your Cousin (STREAM / Link)

[dead prez]

fite me irl faggit

If I had tickets to Ohio I would...

[dead prez]

My issue with the album wasn't so much that it had less Black Thought verses (even though the world needs more BT verses) but because the verses he did drop were pretty unremarkable phoned in as by the book verses that he could possibly drop, which is shocking considering that BT is arguably THE most consistent rapper ever only matched by Slug (until recently where they both fell off) and is consistently cited as never dropping a wack verse. Well he didn't just have average verses here, he had straight mediocre verses while none were certified caca they might as well be since mediocrity offends me as much as straight up terribleness at this point. I get that they were going for something left field and maybe experimental/ avant garde but this was just incredibly yawn inducing. They literally just took the worst aspects of Undun and aped it up to comical proportions and considering the roots are chameleons that are able to adapt with time (that's how they stayed relevant for so long) that's just unacceptable. I'm not saying everything needs to be Game Theory hell Phrenology while also being out there was also a success and showed roots at their creative peak arguably as it's their least straightfoward album, and Game Theory even showed them utilizing their bandlike abilities to the fulles extent and dropped a masterpiece.This just felt lazy and worse yet portentious seemingly alluding to the fact that it's a "concept" trying to cover up it's paper thin premise, it's all just windowdressing. I'd way rather let them have a loose general idea or theme but not let that dictate the flow of the album. But yeah this really felt more like some side effort they shat out cause they've been incredibly busy being a house name and all that so more power to the roots I guess. What really annoyed me was that Black Thought when he wants to can still drop insane verses but just coasted by in this album and he really isn't the type of rapper to primarily rely on charisma like Kanye west or even lil wayne to an extent to carry his verses. He's not as personalityless as Diabolic, Apathy, dzk, etc. but he's more in the realm of nas where if he's not straight killing it than what's the point of listening to him.

[classthe_king]

I didn't think his verse on Never as that bad…

"Spirallin' down, destined to drown
Forever is just a collection of nows"

[Solace]

caca is such a gay word

[Trimss]

caca is such a gay word

It's french for shit.

conclusions: frenchies are gay

[dead prez]

While I'm kinda over my post TES hate at this point, lol. I honestly feel like he was doing his best recovery impression in When the people cheer, yeah that song didn't have lazy rapping it was more like the hook & even worse verse before him that bothered me. The biggest detraction against this album are ofc the musicality of it rather than the lyrics, I just found it really bland. Hopefully they switch their sound up after this, I really am not too worried about Black Thought as a rapper I think that if he ever drops a solo he'd put far more effort in that and would probably drop some stellar shit oh and he better not have weedcarriers go d12 on him and muck that up. & yeah it's pretty anticlimactic and just breezes by and kinda horribly sequenced where it feels like it's taking forever even if it's only just above 30 minutes. Compared to GT or even How I got over's perfectly sequenced mood trails.

[dead prez]

from what I listened I actually kinda like the tipping point, it just plays like a high quality mixtape with Thought killing songs left and right. No real direction ofc but you could tell that Thought was a supremely talented mc and he channeled his talents into making a masterpiece, as a pure rapper he wasn't bad in it.

I have the same feeling towards elzhi atm, I hope he makes an album better than elmatic otherwise he's doomed to being remembered as that guy that covered illmatic really well. & I personally prefer some songs on Elmatic (Detroit State of Mind especially)