While I haven't heard every Common album, I have never rated him as highly as some others have. Whenever I have listened to him I normally enjoy what I hear but love little greatly, probably largely because vocally and stylistically I have never put him on the level of other '90s greats like Cube, Nas, Scarface, Pac and so on. On the production side of things on this album, I find that much of it sounds too simple to WOW me. There are some good jazzy influenced beats by No.I.D, but there's no real killer production, and despite there being many samples in most songs, you don't really notice a lot of them. Track for track the well known 'I Used to Love H.E.R.' is very interesting subject matter wise, in that this is '94, arguably the best year for hip hop ever, but Common is rapping about it going too commercial already - and you'd say a couple of years later in 96-98 it really did heavily start to go down that path with more pop rap hitting the market. Also, some of the tracks like 'Nuthin' to Do' and 'Chapter 13' for me lose a bit of their appeal by going 30-60 seconds too long. Not always, but for most rap songs 5:30 can be pushing it.
Despite this review being mostly negative so far due to the acclaim this has, overall I enjoy it and it's a consistent pleasing solid album but I have never thought of it as any better than that. Generally for me to give an album a four out of five or more it needs to have a few five out of five tracks, and while the first two tracks come close, (and 'Book of Life' ain't far behind) other than those, everything is solid but nothing is too mind blowing. Just below a four out of five for me. It could possibly rise with more listens.
Best Tracks: Resurrection, I Used to Love H.E.R., Book of Life, Communism, Maintaining
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