As I've said before, there's nothing I dislike more than the "elder statesman" persona in rap, where the rapper talks about how terrible things are now vs. how great things were when he was a youngster. At least with Scarface's
The Fix these lyrics were often backed up with great beats; here, we don't even have that. This is one of the most boring albums I've ever heard in my life: the beats are shapeless "groovy" constructions reminiscent of a lobotomized A Tribe Called Quest, and the lyrics are no better. J Dilla did some of these, which makes me wonder if he was saving all his best stuff for the incredible
Donuts six years later. Most of these songs approach six minutes, and the entire album is almost 80 total. It's painful. What I love most about rap is when the beat and vocal mesh on such a level that it becomes hypnotic, when the vocals drop and slide in between each individual beat so well that they cannot be separated (See Nas's "New York State of Mind" for a textbook example of this). This is just lazy, easy-listening R&B (as opposed to D'Angelo's easy-listening R&B, which is anything but lazy). One of these tracks is dedicated to Fela Kuti, one of the greatest musicians to ever walk this earth; to even call this an insult is to give it too much credence. It's not
bad, it's just unacceptably
boring, which is even worse.
MY RATING:
2.1
Common - "The Light"
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