El Michels Affair & Black Thought

• Glorious Game [Big Crown, 2023] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Glorious Game [Big Crown, 2023]
It's been well over a decade since How I Got Over established the Roots' canonical place in the hip-hop pantheon, and hey, 2011's Undun and 2014's . . . And Then You Shoot You Cousin are proudly thematic as well. But then some version of Jimmy Fallon Syndrome, which may merely mean fame or even overwork, got in the way of their thematic ambitions, so frontman Black Thought turned out two excellent concept EPs well before undertaking this collab with keyboardist Leon Michels's New York-based soul quintet. Unlike Undun, say, it isn't plotted—from "The protocol is overhaul/I am not a know-it-all" to "haters'll shoot their shot at you out of a moving car," it's more memoiristic, and it has its limitations as such. But not so's it doesn't fit just fine into the Roots' canon. A-