"I wanted to make hip-hop music. I wanted to make hip-hop that I felt right now and the way that I've known it in my years to sound," he continued. "So it just was about, like, let's make some real good hip-hop music and make it a great piece of art, so when people hear the album, they can have the complete package of everything."
That's Common discussing his new album, the atrocious, hat in th ring for worst album of the year The Dreamer – The Believer. A sort of self-aggrandization chugalug of Common self-regard and moldy old Black whining.
Or is it.
I've read some very positive reviews and really, is it just a case of an artists I can't hear? I've listened to the crap over and over again and the only good thing about it is Nas's rap on "Ghetto Dreams". Other than that, if Common is not bragging, he is plying Gangsta, loverboy or holding hands over black excellence. There is something so horrible, so undignified, about this calling up the centuries dead ghosts of black slaves to point at how great you are.
Essentially, I can't listen to it. It is driving me up the damn wall.
So is Sharon Jones. I didn't much like her last album, her big r&b breakthrough, but it is a work of sustained genius compared with Soul Tine (a variation on Star Time, no doubt). This James Brown funk soul album doesn't have the songs to make it anything more than a disappointment. I've listened to it a couple of times and it is the definition of medicine: you take it befores, cmon, it's a black chick singing soul and you don't wanna be uncool, but it really is one lousy song after another.
Or am I wrong?
I have never been that keen on Common, he hits my prejudice right on the head:
1. The Black Excellence stuff.
2 The Ego
3. The High Art.
With Sharon, it is a little harder to define but I think it boils down to her inability to write great songs. Don't get me wrong, she can write good songs, but she completely misses the knock out punch.I find her distinctly unmemorable.
But again, I am not CERTAIN I'm right.