Common's hip-hop is anything but ordinary
By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer
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| Common is more concerned with throwing down politically and socially conscious verse.
Common 9:30 p.m., Sunday Pipeline Café $15 pre-sale, $20 at door 589-1999 Tickets at Flipside 314 Lewers St., in4mation and Cheapo Music |
A track from Common's genre-busting 2002 rap manifesto "Electric Circus," "E.W.H.F.", is a raging six-minute war cry blasting, among other things, the looting and misappropriation of hip-hop culture.
Spreading his flow like warm butter over a slice of psychedelic guitar toast, courtesy of P.O.D.'s Sonny Sandoval, Common brings in the noise and ends on the funk of the trippiest keyboard solo this side of a Yes space jam circa 1974.
Anyone who has followed the Chicago-born Common through his past four recordings knows the underground hip-hop pioneer is less concerned, lyrically, with babes, bling-bling and Bentleys than laying down intelligent politically and socially conscious verse.
Relentlessly uncommercial, observant and incisive, Common has often been too-casually dismissed by a few hip-hop critics for lyrics too self-righteous and downright serious as cancer.
They've also dissed his tendency to backload his discs with more celebrity musician cameos than a P. Diddy party in The Hamptons. Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, MC Lyte, Erykah Badu, Prince and Mary J. Blige have all guested on Common records.
My advice to critics of Common's weighty verse? Check out "A Film Called (Pimp)," an MC Lyte duet from 2000's excellent "Like Water For Chocolate" CD. Few hip-hop tracks have made me laugh as hard as Common's self-critique of his image in the guise of a seriously demented would-be gangsta pimp named Cornbread Corn.
And that celebrity guest list? After a more than a decade of blissfully intelligent alternative hip-hop, the question should be: Who isn't a Common fan?
Essential Common: "Electric Circus" (2003, MCA), "Like Water For Chocolate (2000, MCA), "One Day It'll All Make Sense" (1997, Relativity), "Resurrection" (1994, Ruthless).
