The year before, New York alternative hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest, came out with one of the best albums of the decade with covers featuring some of the best and most well-known hip-hop artists to emerge up to that point, especially legends of the eighties.
Virtually all of them are there and some of the more than eighty faces present are still unknown. One of the many to have released something until that moment and not to be included in the covers of that album is Lonnie Lynn Jr. aka Common Sense, the MC of Chi-Town who released his debut in '92 with traits of tired, trite and senseless misogyny. The boy realizes that he has done something wrong and decides to copy the A Tribe Called Quest LP as much as possible. The production is entrusted almost exclusively to No ID, while Y-Not provides two rhythms: both are part of the 2 pc. DRK duo and are the only guests on the album, while the scratches are entrusted to Mista Sinista. The rapper's father, Lonnie Lynn, appears on the last track performing in spoken word.
Lyrically, Common Sense abandons the ignorance of the debut (but cannot give up some homophobic lines) and concentrates, bringing out an almost entirely braggadocio project, with some solid metric scheme, decent references to popular culture (rarely good) and generally mediocre and uninspired lyrics, where he steals bars here and there and passes them off as tributes. The lack of imagination will also force him to cut his moniker from Common Sense to Common, because other artists were using it before him. He also changes his delivery, moving to a more fluid and regular style, boasting a crisp, clean, smoothness and dominant flow, whose excellent technique allows him to amalgamate the poverty of the bars.
The work has socio-conscious veins, but is at its finest in "I Used to Love H.E.R.": the idea is brilliant, to use a woman as a metaphor for hip-hop, the song also boasts one of the best rhythms on the CD, nevertheless, even in this case, the text leaves much to be desired. No ID here does an excellent job, combining a pounding, regular, perfect drum with wonderful light samples and creating an accessible and excellent jazzy boom bap. The rapper's delivery is smoothness, but the bars fall simplistic and overly sexual, as well as being a veiled dissing to all the West Coast that he himself tried to imitate in his debut on jazzy musical carpets, without having their success. The song, now considered one of his best ever, becomes a hit and is acclaimed by fans, causing a series of dissing with the West Coast MCs that will be concluded only after the death of 2Pac and Biggie.
Common Sense isn't at his best, and he's surpassed several times by Anthony "Y-Not" Khan in the back n forth of "Chapter 13 (Rich Man vs. Poor Man)", who, besides being his debut, isn't even a rapper, however, the production is one of the best of the year. No ID does a spectacular effort and builds a soundscape very similar to that of the latest A Tribe Called Quest album: jazzy boom bap rhythms, perfect dynamic drums, beautiful, melodic, extraordinarily elegant samples. His beats are a stark testament to a talented producer saving a mediocre rapper's album: in almost all cuts, the performer has to do practically nothing to make the songs classic ("Resurrection", "Nuthin' to Do", and even more evidently, "Orange Pineapple Juice"). Probably, an instrumental version of the album would be a masterpiece, unfortunately the MC always says something by making the overall quality of the project drop considerably.
Released by Relativity, the album is a commercial flop and is hailed as an ordinary record upon release, soon lifted to the status of a Midwest rap classic album in retrospect. Consisting of 15 songs (2 skits) and 54 minutes of listening, it features a fantastic production of No ID and an honest rapping performance. If you arrive without expectations, without thinking that this is one of the best rappers ever, but that he's not even one of the best thirty MCs of the year, you might enjoy it more. Recommended for jazz rap fans.
Rating: 7.7/10.
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