Photos: The Roots In the Studio
The Roots' Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson gets his hair styled at a recording studio in New York. "I don't want to jinx it," Thompson says of the band's 11th album, undun, "but I feel like this is our most realized work."
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The Roots' Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter at a recording studio in New York. Their new concept album, undun (due out December 6th), centers on the death of a fictional young man from their hometown of Philadelphia. "The challenge is always, 'What have we never done before?'" says Thompson. "We've never been so disciplined to stick to a nonlinear narrative structure."
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The Roots' Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter and Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson pose in a New York recording studio. The Roots wrote much of the material for undun while jamming at 30 Rockefeller Center during breaks from taping Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, for which they are the house band. "I'd say on average, we'll create something between three and 11 songs every day," says Thompson. "Some make the cut, some don't, but it starts there."
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The Roots' Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter and Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson at a New York recording studio. The character of Redford Stephens, the complex protagonist of their new album undun, was based in part on real people whom Trotter has known. "It all comes from real-life experience," says the rapper. "The back story is made of all these various stories of people in my family: my cousins, my brother, my parents, people in my neighborhood. All those stories interwoven together represent this guy Redford."
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The Roots' Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter and Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson share a laugh at a New York recording studio. Twenty-five years into their creative partnership, the old friends lead thoroughly distinct creative processes—they even recorded much of their new album, undun, at separate sessions. "He has his shit that he likes in the studio, and so do I—totally different sights and sounds and aromas, different engineers," says Trotter. "I found myself in the studio with Ahmir last Sunday, because our sessions were kind of overlapping, and it was just weird. 'What are we both doing here right now?' But realizing what works and accepting that is what has kept the Roots together for so long."
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The Roots' Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and Tariq "Black Thought" Trotter at a New York recording studio. "We've been branded 'the thinking man's hip-hop,'" says Trotter. "So the music's got to have some level of maturity. We're 40 years old. I want to be able to sit down and listen to the record and enjoy it, and have it still be hip-hop, without feeling like we're reaching. It has to feel right, first and foremost."