The Roots drop "Understand" the third leak off their concept album '...and then you shoot your cousin'
The Roots drop "Understand" the third leak off their concept album '...and then you shoot your cousin'
The Roots drop "Understand" the third official leak (there are no singles on this album! but you can check "When The People Cheer" and "Tomorrow" or stream the whole thing here if you don't mind dealing with an annoying proprietary player) from the forthcoming opus ...and then you shoot your cousin. Single or not, this is definitely one of the most quotable tracks on the album, mostly because of the hook "people ask for god 'til the day he comes /see god face, turn around and run / god sees the face of a man / shakes his head and says 'man'll never understand'." But each of the three assembled MCs brings some lyrical brass knuckles with them as well. Exhibit A: our beloved Black Thought's "I let to devil in to dance / an Electric Slide across the line I drew in the sand." This maybe the most straightforward statement of the album's ghetto existentialist gospel, the bleakest truths of the Black American experience--call it the "Motherless Child" syndrome--projected onto a sense of cosmic abandonment. Nobody said it was the feel-good movie of the year--but it still might be movie of the year. Stream below, and try to understand:
