Oh we understand. That’s the problem.
[Video][Website]
[5.83]
Jer Fairall: The church organ feels a bit too on the nose until Dracula shows up in Black Thought’s verse to lend it a kitschy double meaning. The rest of the track could use more such levity; even coming in just shy of three minutes, its solemnity is wearying.
[5]
Brad Shoup: All respect to Black Thought, but by appearing in media res Dice Raw gives this track a lifesize dimension. It’s like you suddenly gained telepathy. That spacey bass in on the same wavelength, parachuting into the verse like an Air Force photobomber. It’s all Thought can do to distinguish his still-peerless delivery, all stagy inflections and micropauses. Greg Porn settles for a Drunk Uncle impression, hoping his sacrilegious signifiers get elevated by that cocky organ.
[6]
Alfred Soto: The several albums The Roots have released since 2002 boast musical filigrees that I would’ve paid more attention to with a different name above the title — Erykah Badu’s, say. The dumb line about resurrecting an erection aside, “Understand” is as smart, hooky, and uninvolving as their best material.
[6]
Jonathan Bradley: Black Thought can still flow forever, and the creeping horror undertones of the sequence culminating in the “put that sucker in a box like Dracula” line threatens to make “Understand” more than an affirmation these guys still have a career outside Jimmy Fallon. Those clattery drum sounds ?uestlove has favored of late help too, but the less said about Dice Raw channelling Joan Osborne on the hook the better. The organ makes it a wash.
[5]
Thomas Inskeep: The Roots have become a ridiculously nimble, entertaining late-night house band, but they haven’t made a particularly entertaining record in over a decade. This feels like preachy homework: something to be listened to because you’re supposed to, because it’s good for you, not because you actively want to do so. And whoever told Greg Porn that that was a clever rap name should be slapped.
[3]
Anthony Easton: Almost like the rap reworking of the Ta-Nehisi Coates article about reparations, it would be paranoid, except the threat is real. So what replaces paranoia is a righteous fury. That the flow is so smart, and that each verse has a magnificent introduction and coda, adds tension and suspicion. Difficult, and almost experimental, this might be my favourite hip hop track so far this year.
[10]