 Common Chicago rapper Common (originally Common Sense) is anything but what his name implies. His third album shows a high degree of thoughtfulness and care when compared to most of it's rap-and rock-counterparts. It sold rather poorly despite fine cameos from Lauryn Hill, De La Soul, and Erykah Badu; this may be because it is hard to pigeonhole. There is nothing all that commercial about One Day It'll All Make Sense – Common skillfully avoids easy categorization by fearlessly showing all sides of his personality, both strong and weak, hard-headed and thoughtful. This is one of the reasons it's such a good album. Another is, that at least for 50 or so of its 70 minutes, it is one hell of a solid group of songs. "Retrospect for Life," in particular, is an astonishing piece, picking up a sublime Stevie Wonder sample (shades of "Gangsta's Paradise") and creating a gorgeous rap classic around it. Common addresses abortion in very personal terms without resorting to preachiness; he toes this fine line as well as is probably possible. The line "$315 ain't worth your soul" is spine-tingling, as is Hill's gorgeous, gospel-tinged vocal. "G.O.D. (Gaining One's Definition)" follows in the same vein, this time tackling religion, although the results aren't quite as stellar. On the one hand, you have to love a song with the line "Curiosity killed the catechism," but this one always loses me when it gets into the Jehovah's Witness-like theme of a very few being chosen for afterlife paradise. Both of these songs are nestles in a sumptuous mix of piano, strings, and sampled backbeats. Maybe this is "white-critics'-hip-hop" (which I punctuate as if that's an oft-used term), but come on, how much more pretentious would I be trying to listen to Wu-Tang Clan? Let's see, other good moments: "Real Nigga Quotes" and "Gettin' Down at the Ampitheater" are insistently catchy, "Hungry" is a a strong, terse rant (although badly sequenced next to the over-long rant "My City"), "All Night Long" with Erykah Badu is lovely but could have been cut by three minutes without lessening the impact. The "Stolen Moments" trilogy is interesting and actually nerve-wracking, as it details the paranoia and anger wrapped up in having your house robbed and trying to figure out who did it, and finding out it was a friend of yours. And "Fatherhood," a rap by Common's father, Lonnie "Pops" Lynn, could be embarrassing but is instead utterly charming. There are problems: bits of filler are strewn throughout, and the album reaches a low point with guest "star" Canibus's gay-baiting on "Making a Name for Ourselves," a rap cliché that apparently will not be let go, even by otherwise thoughtful artists like Common. It's overall a great purchase, though; trim twenty minutes and you'd have one of the best albums of the last decade, period.
Review by HIP |