CD Reviews

Common

Finding Forever | Geffen

By NICK SYLVESTER | August 14, 2007

2.0 Stars

Can you fault a Second City 35-year-old Gap-shilling rapper for wanting to make elevator hip-hop for Second City 35-year-old Gap-wearing yuppies? There is a place in this world (Pottery Barn maybe, or a future Eddie Murphy romantic comedy) for the R(ap)&B cocktail party that is Finding Forever. “A conscious nigga with mack like Steve Jobs,” Common is this party’s large-hearted host, passing around the demon weed, treating ladies like ladies and telling them so, forgiving hustlers and druggies ’cause they’ve just lost their way. With the exception of Game, no rapper gives more shout-outs. This is a rapper, moreover, who won’t call a man a homosexual unless he’s positive that man is a homosexual (“Your clothes are tight but you don’t seem gay/I said, naw, that’s dude from N-Sync-ay’ ”). Even when Com fumes (“With 12 monkeys on the stage it’s hard to see who’s a guerrilla/You was better as a drug dealer”), there’s always producer Kanye West’s velvet Velveeta soul to calm him down. These beats aren’t West’s typical high-energy dazzlers, but they’re comfy for sure, smoothed over with frequent Soulquarian guest spots. For close to eight minutes of the gospel piano march “Forever Begins,” Common and his pops observe the rising price of gas, the death of J Dilla, tsunamis, “Virginia Tech is not an ‘Oh what the heck,’ ” and various other events that lead them to conclude that things done changed. Yes: Common has become hip-hop’s Mitch Albom. Who wants a martini?

Related: U.N.I.T.Y., Slingin' it, Ghostface Killah, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, Music, More

| More

view all

[ 05/26 ] Arborea + Christopher Paul Stelling + dilly dilly @ One Longfellow Square

[ 05/26 ] "Bike Month: Alley Cat Bike Race & After Party" @ SPACE Gallery

[ 05/26 ] Liquid Sky + Icepicks + Baxx Sisi's @ Bayside Bowl

ARTICLES BY NICK SYLVESTER

PUNK ROCK REDUX | April 01, 2008
Try reimagining early punk as some physically intense and massively popular athletic contest.

ADOLESCENT FUNKS | February 19, 2008
Bradford Cox reminds me of my man Polyphemus — not just the one Odysseus conned in the cave but the one posted up in the countryside and pining in song for the sea nymph Galatea.

POP IN A HARD PLACE | December 16, 2008
The norms Black Dice resist are significant and strong and worth resisting.

BURIAL | December 26, 2007
Dubstep has been given its Dizzee Rascal moment with the release of Burial’s Untrue , the elusive London producer’s second album.