Chi City Part Be

Ok folks, finally got a chance to spend some quality time with this new Com album: on the train, in the crib, headphones vs. stereo, etc. I’ve got a pretty good handle on it now and I’m enjoying it more and more with each listen.

For starters, Rasheed certainly hasn’t lost anything lyrically since we last heard him. In fact, he’s matured considerably. On Be he moves away from his trademark barrage of similes and random insults and adopts a more observational approach. As a result, this album doesn’t have as many memorable one-liners as previous efforts, but his flow is dead on and he rides the beat as well as he ever has.

On the production front, I have to hand it to Kanye – he wove together a very soulful tapestry that serves as the perfect backdrop for the return of Common Sense. Even upon the first listen, it’s quite apparent that this is an album, not a thrown together collection of singles. This is something that’s been conspicuously absent in hip hop for a number of years, and it was refreshing to hear a well sequenced and applicably produced album.

That said, this record breaks down into three distinct parts, in a pattern than generally resembles an inverse bell curve. It starts strong, dips in the middle, and rises again at the end.

The first (and title) track is one of the best opening salvos I’ve heard in a while. It starts with a super dope stand up bass-line and builds to full blown orchestral backing. The song/album title "Be" is as cheesy as the synth work that’s also in this mix, but I’m looking past all that, because the last time I saw Common he was in a Coke commercial, and now he’s flexing ill cadence over my favorite new beat of 2005. He doesn’t really say a-lot on the opening number, but he makes up for it on next track, "The Corner."

Track two is vintage Kanye, right down to the signature sped up voice from an old soul 45, and Com puts it to good use. Dude vividly channels South Side Chicago streets with lines like: "I rolled in an Olds with windows that don’t roll / down the roads where cars get broken and stole." This is part of several bars of similar internal rhyme and you can hear the renewed fire in his belly. Common sounds hungry and it translates to some of the best wordplay on the album.

This leads into "Go", which is an airy track with a nice drum kick but not much substance. It’s not bad, but it begins the descent into the middle of the album, which lags for three more songs. "Faithful" is a soft, gospel-ey number which is pleasant I suppose, but it doesn’t do much to move things forward. "Testify" is kind of a sultry beat with a heavy Aretha-sounding vocal overlay, but it’s as pointless as the troika on One Day It Will All Make Sense about how homeboy’s crib got broken into. "Love is" is embarassing. He should have left this one for Erykah.

After the dip, Com and Kanye bring something fierce and very listenable for the rest of the album. "Chi City" features an amped up Common Sense spitting fire over pounding percussion. Definitely a "get up / stand up anthem." This bleeds into the piano-laden, Primo-influenced, "The Food" – which we all heard on The Dave Chappelle Show forever ago, and which gave us all reason to believe that maybe Ms. Badu hadn’t driven Common completely out of his gorge.

"Real People" and "They Say" are a tightly coupled pair with the spirit of Grover Washington Jr. and Donald Byrd floating around in ‘em. Nice brass and keys on these tracks, with Mr. Lynn speaking to streetlife, struggling and disenfranchisement. If these songs were food at Sylvia’s, they’d be this and this, respectively. They’re also the perfect lead-in to the quasi-autobiographical, "It’s your world". Jay-Dee got off my poop list for just under nine minutes with this tune, which sounds ripped from a classic blacksploitation flick. Com comes personal and has that fire in his belly again. The piano transition to Pop’s rap is well executed, too. Quality close.

I went into this album expecting nothing. Electric Circus had a few joints, but was mostly a train wreck. MC’s rarely atrophy for two records and come back with a banger their 6th time out. But Common took it back and took it forward at the same time on Be. He grew as a lyricist, but kept it simple, too: most tracks are just two verses, with some scratching, singing or instrumenation to fill out the three minutes. He’s the primary MC on every song – there’s actually only one guest verse on the whole record – and he didn’t pollute the album by employing lots of different producers. This is a "classical" formula and the end product is a very cohesive long player that appreciates with multiple listens. 4 out of 5 jars.