He warns about vanity in "Drivin' Me Wild" and sympathizes with a drug hustler and a stripper trying to get by in “Misunderstood” (backed by Nina Simone’s voice).
Common describes his work as “street radio for unsung heroes” in “The People,” a tract on the new album that veers between a complaint about not getting a Grammy Award and a grand mission statement.
And he’s not the kind of hip-hop purist who would disdain a pop hook.Ĭommon’s new album, “Finding Forever,” revisits his favorite subjects: African-American struggles, romance, the state of hip-hop, elegies for predecessors and hometown Chicago pride. He’s genuinely respectful toward women without denying his lust. He has the social consciousness of a collegiate underground rapper, but he also has Top 10 sales figures his previous album, “Be,” from 2005, entered the pop charts at No. Yet Common’s sheer straightforwardness lets him transcend hip-hop’s factions. His tone is forthright and matter of fact, and he rattles off his rhymes steadily in their chosen meters, without sudden emphases or bursts of speed.
KELEFA SANNEHĬommon isn’t a flashy rapper. He’s better in lovably ridiculous songs like “Your Sister”: “If I’m wrong, oh I don’t wanna be right/I kissed your sister last night/It ain’t my fault, I guess your sister’s my type.” (It evokes Beck’s R&B parody “Debra,” though that may be a coincidence.) Still, good news for Rihanna and Akon and all the rest: This breezy hip-pop thing is trickier than it seems. (For example: “Dem dis Sean Kingston, dem gonna get a scar.”) He spent his childhood in Jamaica, which gave him his stage name and his command of patois, but his version of thug love (“Girl, I know it’s rough, but come with me/We can take a trip to the ’hood”) makes it sound as if he’s trying too hard, or not hard enough. Given all that, this is a surprisingly awkward album, with too many underbaked love songs and unmenacing threats. R.) Rotem, clearly isn’t shy about reworking the “Beautiful Girls” formula: “Me Love,” another song from the album, updates Led Zeppelin’s “D’yer Mak’er” “Got No Shorty” borrows from “I Ain’t Got Nobody” (which was a hit for Louis Prima and, later, David Lee Roth) “I Can Feel It” samples “In the Air Tonight,” by Phil Collins. In any case he’s got a big hit, and now comes his debut album, in which this singer (and occasional rapper) tries to find himself a niche somewhere between Rihanna and Akon. King’s “Stand By Me.” His girlfriend is “too beautiful, girl, that’s why it’ll never work,” though it seems the problem goes back a while: “Back in ’99, watching movies all the time/Oh, when I went away for doing my first crime/And I never thought that we was gonna see each other.” (It’s so hard to find a good woman, especially when you’re a 9-year-old criminal.) The whole situation leaves him “suicidal, suicidal,” though some radio stations play the version that leaves him “in denial, in denial,” and still others just erase those eight semi-controversial syllables altogether. Sean Kingston is 17, and he already has a summer smash, "Beautiful Girls" in which he explains his romantic entanglements using a vocal processor and a sample from Ben E. SEAN KINGSTON “Sean Kingston” (Beluga Heights/Epic)
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