Roots’ MC Black Thought has described ...And Then You Shoot Your Cousin as satire. However, it’s hard to tell where the dark humour starts and ends.
Drummer Questlove recently wrote a series of essays titled How Hip Hop Failed Black America? In it, he argued that hip hop is a narrative rather than a sonic art form. Ironically, on this record, it is impossible to separate the two. Again and again, music and meaning blend into one.
Clocking in at just over 33 minutes, it is a tight collection. It veers from soul to blues via jazz without sacrificing coherence. In the final third, especially, it comes fully into its own. ‘The Coming’ has a brilliant climax, ‘The Dark (Trilogy)’ has the most direct rhymes. It’s also the angriest moment on the record.
The album’s final track is the sunny, redemptive ‘Tomorrow’. There’s just a touch of Monty Python’s ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ to it – but maybe that isn’t a bad thing. Abandoning all hope is certainly not the answer...

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