The Roots
…And Then You Shoot Your Cousin
(Def Jam)

You can’t say The Roots don’t know how to keep busy. …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin is the sixth album they’ve made since taking on the full-time job of being Jimmy Fallon’s house band. It certainly won’t be remembered as one of their finest albums, but its still a feat that they can get it together to write and record good music at all. If this album doesn’t wow, at least it breezes by. There are only eleven tracks, which is pretty unheard of for a hip-hop album, and three of them are brief snatches of other people’s songs. The remaining eight songs are all perfectly good. First single “When the People Cheer” sounds like a first single while “Never” begs to be used in a film trailer. “The Coming” is an experimental pastiche with avant-garde and classical riffs that remind the listener of one of the reasons The Roots are not like other hip-hop artists. They still sound best though when they are just jamming. “Black Rock” has an awesomely funky groove you can’t help but nod your head to and closing track “Tomorrow” is the only “feel good” song on the album, which is the right way to end things. The Roots are still one of the most important bands in the business today. They might not have broken new ground with …And Then You Shoot Your Cousin, but come on, how many bands do you know that can make full albums with artists as different as John Legend and Elvis Costello and appear on TV every night and still put out their own albums on a regular basis?