Recordings
Common regains mojo with a fiery new release
At 44, Common is better known as an actor these days than he is a hip-hop artist. But he's influenced two generations of Chicago MCs — in many ways he made Kanye West and Chance the Rapper possible — and in recent years he's re-emerged not just as an “elder statesman” of socially and politically conscious rap, but as a still-vital practitioner.
It wasn't always so. Common's albums flattened out as his movie and TV credits expanded. But a strong 2014 album, “Nobody's Smiling,” put him back on the radar, and a collaboration with John Legend on “Glory” garnered him an Oscar. Now, “Black America Again” (ARTium/Def Jam) arrives as one of the year's most potent protest albums.
The title song lays out the album's ambitions, with melancholy piano chords and strings swerving from sharp to sweet over a churning rhythm track. The track connects several generations of African-American music — James Brown extolling black pride, a nod to Public Enemy, a soulful coda by Stevie Wonder — as Common puts a twist on a certain presidential candidate's vow to “make America great again.”
This is an album that revolves around the notion of freedom, and what it means in a society that still hasn't closed many of the chasms between races and genders. Michelle Alexander's 2012 book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” provides a touchstone for many of the songs, which detail how racial oppression really hasn't changed all that much over the centuries, only the methods. Common's songs mirror Alexander's central assertion: Whereas once slavery and the plantations shackled people of color, now it's the criminal justice system and federal prisons.
The music, overseen by producer Karriem Riggins, whose work straddles hip-hop and jazz, connects Common to the musical expansiveness of his finest albums (including “Like Water for Chocolate” in 2000 and “Be” in 2005): The upright bass and swinging rhythms of jazz, the pleading choirs of gospel, the vintage crackle of “dusties” soul, and funk tweaked by psychedelia. It is unfailingly melodic and warm, even at its fieriest.
In the horn-spackled “Home” and the abstract funk of “Pyramids” Common casts himself as a spiritual messenger and taps into a sci-fi strain of Afro-Futurism that he first explored on one of his most misunderstood and underappreciated works, “Electric Circus,” in 2002. It's fitting that “Pyramids” is anchored by the voice of the late rapper Ol' Dirty Bastard, who beams in like a cracked prophet ranting from a distant galaxy.
The album sags midway through, but finishes with some of its most emotionally resounding tracks: the “Glory”-like plea for redemption “Rain” with Legend, the celebration of family that is “Little Chicago Boy,” and the staggering “Letter to the Free.” While invoking Maya Angelou and Alexander's sobering analysis of the “new Jim Crow,” this “Letter” blends haunting vocals and a martial rhythm into a new freedom march.
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