Dear Rashid,
You fell off. That Universal Mind Control album? Garbage. And that shit hurt my heart. Your career trajectory was inspiring, to say the least. Fifteen years after your debut, you were just reaching the apex of your powers circa Be. Prior to that, you’d released one of the most adventurous albums in modern hip-hop history, Electric Circus. Props for that one, too. But man, listening to you spit over warmed over Neptunes beats…it was like if LL had jumped from “Mama Said Knock You Out” to “Exit 13” in four years instead of fifteen.
I have high hopes for your new album, The Dreamer, The Believer. Why? Because I know you’re talented, and you obviously have an axe to grind. Some of the best art is made by people with an underdog mentality. Also, because No I.D. is behind the boards, and I’ll take him over Skateboard P any day (especially a past-his-prime Skateboard P.) This new video, for “Sweet”? It’s OK, I guess. I like the cinematography. Nice touch to film in Haiti, I suppose. The song itself? It’s been a while since we’ve heard an angry Common, so that’s cool. But how hard can you be these days? You’re pushing 40. You starred in a major motion picture with Queen Latifah. You playing the hard role is kinda like ME playing the hard role when I haven’t even been in a fistfight in something like fifteen years. It’s not exactly believable. Then, as far as the utilization of the word “controversial” at the beginning of the video? What *exactly* is “controversial” about it? I should also add that anyone who needs to spell out the fact that their video is “controversial” probably isn’t being “controversial”.
One thing rappers continually forget as they age and suffer career setbacks is that they need to be themselves, whoever that is. I like the song enough, but it seems almost as though Common is trying too hard. It’s like I’m nodding my head and rolling my eyes at the same time.
The beat is banging, though.
3 comments
Greg says:
Nov 16, 2011
Man, you hit the nail on the head here. Backpacker assholes and hip-hop bloggers are probably going to eat this up and call it a return to form, but this is just a different form of pandering, and honestly, I’m not holding out much hope for the album at this point. “Ghetto Dreams” felt depressingly anticlimactic for a summit between two of the finest rappers of the nineties, and “Blue Sky” was just more of the “consciousness-by-the-numbers” that marred “Finding Forever.” All bluster and no substance.
That said, the beat _is_ pretty banging. At least Com got the production right this time around.
Kyle says:
Nov 17, 2011
Geez, Greg. Personally, I like the song – and I don’t really want to be lumped in to either category you said. I see no problem with Common trying to kick ass and take names again – he’s done it on prior albums and no one’s had any problems with it. He’s not pretending to be a PERSON he’s not – killing/robbing/still living in the slums – he’s trying to get back up after falling down hard with “Universal Mind Control”, and reestablish himself as a rapper who can beat any challenger and ridicule anyone who is embarrassing the genre. It’s not perfect – I still think Com’s not on his A game, but personally I find it, at the very least, mostly promising.
With that said, uh…I’d like to hear from you a little more, and I wasn’t trying to be over-confrontational.
Anyway, “Blue Sky” was…decent, but I loved the Electric Group Orchestra (is that what they’re called) sample, and while Com was on autopilot in “Ghetto Dreams,” the song was still good. As a big fan, I still think the album could turn out pretty good. And if not…I’m not expecting perfection anyway. He still has to refocus on writing better lyrics and find the hunger that sustained him for over a decade…this could just be a stepping stone to finding himself again.
Greg says:
Nov 18, 2011
Kyle:
Here’s the thing—Common hasn’t shown any sign of learning from past failures, by which I pretty much mean his last two albums. “Ghetto Dreams” is just more of the same awkward womanizing that comprised the bulk of “Universal Mind Control”—in fact, it’s actually worse, because it mixes bumbling pickup lines with casual “women are only good for ass and cooking” sexism. “Sweet” is another weak braggadocio similar to UMC’s “Gladiator,” and “Blue Sky” is another self-congratulatory “conscious” track about Com’s relationship with the poor and underprivileged. No ID is the only person trying to push these tracks to another level (Nas’s guest verse on “Ghetto Dreams” is solid, but a far cry from his best work). And I don’t think that Common has fallen off, not completely anyway—I think he’s continuing to prioritize an inconsequential acting career over the one thing he’s really good at (though “Hell on Wheels” sounds promising, at least he’s not just playing a minor character in a heist movie). He’s still in phoning it in; he’s just doing it in a way that’ll get him less shit from the backpacker community.
And for the record, when I refer to “backpacker assholes and hip-hop bloggers,” I’m referring to a pretty specific crowd, namely the self-righteous trolls you find lurking around sites like Potholes, DJBooth and 2DopeBoyz, or reviewing forums like iTunes, Amazon and RateYourMusic. The people who claimed that The Left’s “Gas Mask” and Reks’s “Rhythmatic Eternal…” were instant classics when they dropped, and then forgot they existed a month later. The people who post stupid shit at iTunes like “Vote Yes for [Blu, Pac Div, Kendrick Lamar]…No for [Drake, Lil B, Waka Flame].” The people who claim, with no amount of irony whatsoever, that the crap pumped out by Bad Boy and No Limit in the late-nineties was somehow better than the stuff played on commercial radio today. So yeah, don’t take it personally.