Just when hip-hop least expects it, an unexpected but weird trend of hip-hop artists that all but abandoned the genre for other interests outside of music comes back to the fold. In the year 2024, this is definitively the case, first with LL Cool J trying to get his hip-hop feet wet again in a questionable collaboration with Fat Joe and Rick Ross. Following in their footsteps are now Common and Pete Rock, who have taken center stage in anticipation of their upcoming release The Auditorium: Volume 1, which implies there will be follow ups to this first cooperative endeavor.
While the forgiving hip-hop community are rooting their veterans on in restoring honor and valor to the cypher, especially in a world where artificial intelligence songs are stealing the genre’s thunder, the social media releases of three core singles from Chicago and New York City’s Finest have fallen short of tumbling head first into a vat of spicy mustard without the benefit of goggles. Trust and believe listening to their offerings burns just as bad. Sadly, while a lot of hip-hop heads are stirring major buzz on Common’s return with Pete Rock at his side, the singles excitability wear off after first listen.
The biggest problem is that Common all but walked away from hip-hop for more than decade after his Oscar win for acting pursuits, so it is painful to hear him on his latest lyrical banquet doing the most spouting rhymes that have no story behind them and having no clue as to what the point of the song is. He’s so far removed from the passion and perfect form conviction orchestrated in his Like Water For Chocolate days that his rhyme scheme comes off as little more than an enlightened prison inmate that just read The Autobiography Of Malcolm X for the first time and thinks he knows everything about Black history in every conversation thereafter.
Dreamin’ is a typical Pete Rock throwaway beat using a sample from Aretha Franklin’s Daydreaming, but neither the track nor Common go particularly hard at convincing the audience the song is worth a second listen. Common in particular starts the track off recycling a few things from Funky For You, which implies the verse is about a chick he’s trying to holler at, but then farts left field in a blitz of name calling musical artists that feels like it’s for rhythmic show than world building on the verse. He follows up the second half of the song in further confusion in part to an ad-lib fest of Black historical leaders and their alleged influence on Common (and in what capacity I still don’t know since he doesn’t make it clear) and I’m left with a cut that sounds like drunk carpool karaoke trying to get the lyrics to Good Times right.
Wise Up has a nasty beat that is going hard, so hard that saying its going hard is an understatement, but once again Common is mush mouth mumbling words that rhyme together instead of telling us a story like he would in Payback Is A Grandmother. The lyrics literally are not talking about anything. Right when you think it might be about a Muslim or something religious that Common has went through (like when he says he comes from people with dogs in them that are now Gods with no hog in them) he just jumps ship and starts in run off sentences that fails to tell a comprehensive story that makes sense (pretty much every other bar in the song). For a lyricist that has been in the game for over thirty something odd years I expect something better than a Word Smart tongue twister that sounds like egg fart.
Tryin’ is perfectly named, because Common is trying a whole lot and failing to succeed at completion. The beat is pretty mediocre; while it boasts hip-hop flavored essence it comes off as a artificial intelligence created four bar loop that data mined the worst soul singers of the seventies to generate the track. Common attempts to stand on his Chicago square with his hodgepodge lyrics but it doesn’t add any secret sauce or condiments to the completion of the song. As a nice throwaway B-side cut die hard fans will support it out of loyalty and nostalgia, but new listeners to the genre will be turned off by the awkward choice of sample, Common’s chaotic lyrics, and the demo like quality that the song permeates from the back end.
After listening to the singles, its quite obvious that Common’s acting ambitions have not made him a breakout star on the silver screen comparable to his peers like Queen Latifah and Mos Def; as such he’s going back to basics and hoping to show up and show out yet falling way behind the eight ball in that endeavor. Ahead of The Auditorium: Volume 1’s release the offerings are not impressive enough to anticipate a purchase and are at the bare minimum threshold of keeping the die hard fans attention.
Color me unimpressed. I expect far more greatness out of Common. I expect him to take hip-hop as seriously as he did in his youth. I expect him to talk about Chicago in a way that isn’t just to have a convenient word to rhyme on his scheme. It’s not cute nor attractive at his age to engage in a collaboration with Pete Rock and piss it away on cutesy iambic pentameters while holding on to his lost hip-hop celebrity from twenty years ago. It doesn’t do him, the fans, nor the genre any justice.
If this is the best Common has to offer with Pete Rock in tow, he might as well give it to artificial intelligence and call it one because his best hip-hop days are far behind him.
