In the music world, an EP (or “Extended Play”) has between three and five songs, while an album and an LP (or “Long Play”) have somewhere around 10 or 12. For the next album from The Roots, they might have to come up with a brand new word, because the band has already written and recorded 263 tracks. Questlove dropped that reveal while speaking with HipHopDX, but it might be slightly less ridiculous than it seems on the surface.
Questlove says they’ll usually just keep making songs until they realize they’ve made enough good ones to fill an album, with that typically happening when they’ve recorded about 100, but this time they’ve just kept going. “Ideas keep coming,” Questlove says, adding that he promised they’ll cut it off by November 1 and pick out 14 of the best ones, but he thinks they might have 400 by then. Questlove pins a lot of the struggle to stop on the 2014 death of longtime manager Richard Nichols, who he says was always the “referee” who could tell them to stop when they’ve done enough.
The album—or the endless box set, if they can’t trim it down—will be The Roots’ 17th, and it’s tentatively titled End Game.