Amazing they’ve found the time, but the Roots are almost set to release their new concept album. Black Thought recently had some things to say about the new album, titled & Then You Shoot Your Cousin, which is tentatively due out this Spring.

Photo by Raymond Flotat

We have no idea how they squeezed it in, but the Roots have a new album in the works, and it’s almost done. We haven’t heard a proper album from Black Thought, Questlove and co. since 2011’s undun, though they haven’t exactly been inactive. Exact opposite, actually – when they’re not backing Fallon (and covering “Blurred Lines” with him), they’ve been collaborating with a few seriously huge names. Costello, for one; Wise Up Ghost, a recent collaboration album, dropped in fall.

Again, we’re impressed they found the time to record the new album. Especially given how unusual it sounds. Black Thought has stated that the album will follow in the conceptual footsteps of undun, which tracked the life of the fictional Redford Stevens. However, instead of one character, & Then You Shoot Your Cousin will follow several. Black Thought’s explanation:

“We created some of these characters that we kind of see… We as artists, musicians, Philadelphians, New Yorkers, we as black men, we’re familiar with very many of these characters, and we kind of introduce them to the rest of the world in a manner that makes them more easily understood than maybe seeing it.”