Common
Finding Forever
Rating - 6 / 10
The beauty of hip-hop springs from want, its enduring soul from need. A need that to an eighteen year-old bound in the urban South– South Bronx, Southwest Atlanta, South Central L.A. and the Southside of Chicago serving as telling metaphors of abjection – is unquenchable. I first stumbled upon the abstraction of hunger on Main Source’s seminal 1991 LP Breaking Atoms. The track “Live at the Barbeque” captured the carnivorous ferocity of a young Nasty Nas “trapped in a cage and let out by Main Source.” I then concretely grasped the concept of hunger with the No I.D. produced joint, ‘Hungry’, on Lonnie Lynn’s One Day It’ll All Make Sense, the track all nails and granite, sharp horn stabs and cracked guitars the locus for Common’s intro stanza “I walk the night in rhymin’ armor / Bomb a nigga like a winter coat/ Have him on Death Row searching for an Interscope / Yet I sparkle like Irene Cara / Symbolize dope like sirens do terror” – an intro that may only be second in rap history to Inspectah Deck’s atomic bombing on “Triumph.” If only I would have known how fleeting this urgency is in rap music I would have held on to all those dollar cassettes, finding refuge in the metonymic relics of authenticity. I can still see KRS-One peering out the window like Malcom with the joint on By All Means Necessary, Mr. Parker a prescient Edward Gibbon looking down upon the history of the decline and fall of hip-hop.
The point here, though, is not to claim that we should reminisce over hip-hop’s passing but to note the Manichean relationship between hunger and contentment. Hip-hop is bound by ledges, its heights Olympian, its chasms infinite. Despite my own attempts to ignore the oft-disappointing obelisk, I am always drawn to it to see who will be the next icon to fall off. And they always fall off.
Common is one individual that seems to personify this dualism. He began in the chasm, all hunger and not much else on Can I Borrow a Dollar?, an endearing yet broke collection of battle raps and boom-bap. He then emerged as one of the filthiest since Nas on Resurrection, a sonic and lyrical masterpiece. His descent was slower than most, his stomach growing plump on sugary singles like “Retrospect for Life”, “The Light” and “Come Close.” Yet each subsequent album revealed that Common was not completely satiated as “Hungry” and “6th Sense” allowed the Chicagoan to bear his rather defanged teeth. Then he reminded us of his imminence on his masterwork, Be, producer Kanye West returning us to Leon’s Barbeque, with Common in line impatiently waiting to devour the rib tips, hot sauce and fries inside.
Finding Forever is an attempt to revisit the Southside so viscerally imagined on Be. But the Chicago depicted here is much more Potemkin than authentic. With references to Midnight Marauders littered throughout, Common attempts to remind us that he is the same Lonnie Lynn from Chi-City. Yet his is a city much more Super Bowl than Scribble Jam, the streets replaced with stadium-like fast food stalls destroying any vestiges of the old Leon’s. Compared to its predecessor, Finding Forever misfires from the start. Whereas James Poyser assisted ‘Be’ was Donnie Hathaway cold breath on a Chicago night, ‘Intro’ is more Grover Washington, Jr. tepidity. ‘Start the Show’ almost undoes the new age futility of the previous track with Pretty Purdie snares and Common directing us to “feel the passion of this b-boy rationale.” His attempts to personify a modern Gil Scott-Heron are almost believable on “The People” while Kanye absolutely kills the beat with fluttering synths and stuttering bass. Yet Finding Forever’s ultimate weakness is paradoxically manifest in its penultimate track, as Dwele provides a wholly unnecessary, unimaginative hook. In fact, the syrupy pop throughout is thick as molasses, reaching its fulsome pinnacle on the will.i.am assisted ‘I Want You.’ As much as we try to avoid the obvious, will.i.am is nothing short of wack. He’s especially lost on an album intended as an ode to the late J-Dilla; where the latter exuded soul, the former can only attempt to replicate it in a pop format, his attempts about as well-executed as Lenny Kravitz covering ‘Purple Rain.’
Burners ‘Southside’ and ‘The Game’ do provide momentary cover from the smooth, Soulquarian-lite deluge of the record. Kanye re-imagines his impeccable performance from ‘The Food’ on ‘Southside,’ mimicking, “Your fly is open mid-fly, the crowd is open I think I know why / I’m back from the future seen it with my own eyes / And yep I’m still the future of the Chi.” Though Common produces occasional signs of life on these two tracks, he disappears into neo-soul banality throughout the second-half of the album; the low-point most assuredly the obvious, soulless rendering of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.’ While any attempt to transmit the melancholic uplift of Ms. Simone’s live performances, as even Antony will admit, is unwieldy, ‘Misunderstood’ undoubtedly personifies Common’s attempt to replicate the refocused hunger he found on Be. Unfortunately, he is more the bloated LL on Mr. Smith then the starving James Smith on Radio. And while on ‘The People’ Common claims to have found the new Preemo in Kayne, it seems we have found the new Guru in Common, a rather apathetic pop-rapper that may have finally fallen off once and for all.
The point here, though, is not to claim that we should reminisce over hip-hop’s passing but to note the Manichean relationship between hunger and contentment. Hip-hop is bound by ledges, its heights Olympian, its chasms infinite. Despite my own attempts to ignore the oft-disappointing obelisk, I am always drawn to it to see who will be the next icon to fall off. And they always fall off.
Common is one individual that seems to personify this dualism. He began in the chasm, all hunger and not much else on Can I Borrow a Dollar?, an endearing yet broke collection of battle raps and boom-bap. He then emerged as one of the filthiest since Nas on Resurrection, a sonic and lyrical masterpiece. His descent was slower than most, his stomach growing plump on sugary singles like “Retrospect for Life”, “The Light” and “Come Close.” Yet each subsequent album revealed that Common was not completely satiated as “Hungry” and “6th Sense” allowed the Chicagoan to bear his rather defanged teeth. Then he reminded us of his imminence on his masterwork, Be, producer Kanye West returning us to Leon’s Barbeque, with Common in line impatiently waiting to devour the rib tips, hot sauce and fries inside.
Finding Forever is an attempt to revisit the Southside so viscerally imagined on Be. But the Chicago depicted here is much more Potemkin than authentic. With references to Midnight Marauders littered throughout, Common attempts to remind us that he is the same Lonnie Lynn from Chi-City. Yet his is a city much more Super Bowl than Scribble Jam, the streets replaced with stadium-like fast food stalls destroying any vestiges of the old Leon’s. Compared to its predecessor, Finding Forever misfires from the start. Whereas James Poyser assisted ‘Be’ was Donnie Hathaway cold breath on a Chicago night, ‘Intro’ is more Grover Washington, Jr. tepidity. ‘Start the Show’ almost undoes the new age futility of the previous track with Pretty Purdie snares and Common directing us to “feel the passion of this b-boy rationale.” His attempts to personify a modern Gil Scott-Heron are almost believable on “The People” while Kanye absolutely kills the beat with fluttering synths and stuttering bass. Yet Finding Forever’s ultimate weakness is paradoxically manifest in its penultimate track, as Dwele provides a wholly unnecessary, unimaginative hook. In fact, the syrupy pop throughout is thick as molasses, reaching its fulsome pinnacle on the will.i.am assisted ‘I Want You.’ As much as we try to avoid the obvious, will.i.am is nothing short of wack. He’s especially lost on an album intended as an ode to the late J-Dilla; where the latter exuded soul, the former can only attempt to replicate it in a pop format, his attempts about as well-executed as Lenny Kravitz covering ‘Purple Rain.’
Burners ‘Southside’ and ‘The Game’ do provide momentary cover from the smooth, Soulquarian-lite deluge of the record. Kanye re-imagines his impeccable performance from ‘The Food’ on ‘Southside,’ mimicking, “Your fly is open mid-fly, the crowd is open I think I know why / I’m back from the future seen it with my own eyes / And yep I’m still the future of the Chi.” Though Common produces occasional signs of life on these two tracks, he disappears into neo-soul banality throughout the second-half of the album; the low-point most assuredly the obvious, soulless rendering of Nina Simone’s ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.’ While any attempt to transmit the melancholic uplift of Ms. Simone’s live performances, as even Antony will admit, is unwieldy, ‘Misunderstood’ undoubtedly personifies Common’s attempt to replicate the refocused hunger he found on Be. Unfortunately, he is more the bloated LL on Mr. Smith then the starving James Smith on Radio. And while on ‘The People’ Common claims to have found the new Preemo in Kayne, it seems we have found the new Guru in Common, a rather apathetic pop-rapper that may have finally fallen off once and for all.
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