The Dreamer/The Believer

Album expected to come some other time

We give Common what we owe him. Only few expected him to present a new album this year. The man looked too busy as he was mastering the craft of acting. However, his multiple fans wanted to believe the music remained his priority number one and more brilliant records were on their way. As brilliant as, for instance, the award collector and chart conqueror, Finding Forever. It turned out that four years have already passed since that release. And in this span of time Common has made only one full-length, Universal Mind Control, which, in fact, raised a storm of indignation in the audience. The artist made a wise decision not to haste with the making of the following record; he knew two failures in a row could crush him down or even jeopardize his entire musical career. Nobody hurried him up, nobody pushed him, and the rapper took a long break to get far from music and find his spot in cinema. Finally, right before the end of 2011, Common surprised many with the release of a fresh album, The Dreamer/The Believer. And only the chosen few might have an idea where and how he found the time to prepare it.

Common rested on well-tested means

There are no swift stylistic turns Common pulled off on the previous release. The Dreamer/The Believer offers quite a diversity of material here (within the limits of the genre, of course), but it is achieved with great discretion. Neo-soul samples, accurately introduced piano parts form splendid background from Common’s own performance. He seems to be still somewhere in between the leagues. He writes sagas of mean streets and quite profound thoughts about faith and lifetime goals. Meanwhile, he does both well. In Gold, the artist just highlights this duality as he describes himself as both the voice of the poor and underprivileged and the voice of success and fame. Deceitfully called Sweet, the track is a demonstration of his own achievements and strengths, which is always expected from a rapper of Common level. The singer declares that he is to hip-hop the same as Obama to politics. Truth be told, following the patterns sometimes takes him too far. In Windows, another beauty is compared to a rose growing out of asphalt. This could be beautiful, but we have sure heard it a couple of times already, or more.

Such good and different songs on The Dreamer/The Believer

It is really great that the best tracks on The Dreamer/The Believer are not like one another. The album opener, The Dreamer, uses widely female back-vocals to contrast Common’s raw and straightforward manner. The Believer relies on John Legend’s chorus and closes the album in high spirit leaving the listener assured everything is going to be alright. Another great theme is Lovin’ I Lost, having catchy dance beats, and Ghetto Dreams. This one is mainly attractive due to the top-notch text and Common’s rapping. It appears that The Dreamer/The Believer, as a matter of fact, uses all angles any hip-hop release would. You have got emotional delivery here from one of the genre’s best. You’ve also got pretty rude spoken word blended seamlessly with lyrical neo-soul crooning. At the same time, powerful partiers are mixed up with low tempo thoughtful pieces. Finally, the album boasts of what used to be an integral part of every good rap album and seems to be quite a rarity today. We are talking about the lyrics, written with good rhyme, in style, and upon irksome issues.