Common — A Beautiful Revolution (Pt 1)

Album number 13 for Lonnie Lynn Jr. aka Common. Oh, what to say, he's clearly not at his best here, I think he misread one of Noname's tweets and felt compelled to release something.

In short, it's evident that all these thirty minutes he doesn't want to do and say anything: there's only one solo song out of nine, he doesn't participate in intro and outro, the rest of this sort of extended play is entrusted almost exclusively to the guests, to their the work of bring the entire disk to the bottom. The dude still knows how to write, and this is one of the few elements that saves the project: his pen is busy, but his rapping is anomalous, lazy, subdued. His arguments are political, pro-blacks and positive, not innovative or sublime, but not too bad, however he delivers in a reluctantly way, as if he knows he doesn't want / have to make the album, but that in any case it'll bring him some pocket money.

From a photo of the Ghanaian artist Derrick Boateng, we get what is the best cover ever in an album published by the rapper, and it's one of the rare positive notes of the record. Production is on the bad side, incredibly: all tracks sound the same, it's good if the rhythm is good, but in this case, the music chosen by producer Karriem Riggins (sometimes aided by Robert Glasper and Burniss Earl Travis II) is trivially average: there's a faint jazzy beat, with decent samples and instrumentalists playing almost randomly, weak and tired, the result is a noise that isn't worth spitting on. And, indeed, Common doesn't do it, he just talks or practically sings.

After the intro, there's Common's only solo joint, and it's not even a solo because there's an uncredited girl to the soul chorus, the beat is just decent. In the next song, on a tribal drum and a ridiculous rhythm, Black Thought takes the album. The following songs are a tribute to the singer Paris Jones, to whom my congratulations go, she did a nice job dragging the tape with four hooks which unlike the Chicago MC rapping, doesn't look so out of place and have five times his energy, even in the most commercial pop / rnb executions. There would also be Lenny Kravitz, in "A Riot In My Mind", on hook and synthesizer (not on guitar...), but he doesn't make a difference. To conclude, this far too long album is disappointing, here Common has one of the sloppier productions and one of the worst rapping performances of his career.

Rating: 5/10.