Common is confused, and who can blame him? His career has stumbled in so many directions that confusion is kind of unavoidable. He's gone from being a troubled, semi-alcoholic underground rapper, to a knit-cap, Soulquarian prince, to Kanye West's older, less-cool cousin, to now, just a friendly-looking guy who occasionally appears in Gap ads. At this point, it's anyone's guess who the "Common" on Common's records might be. The confusion reached its low point on 2008's Universal Mind Control, in which we were introduced the mortifying sight of strip-club Common. Now, The Dreamer/The Believer finds him banging his chest, demanding to know when hip-hop got all soft and sweet, and attempting to engage Drake in a war on wax.
It's a bewildering spectacle, but a painful midlife crisis can cut two ways: In one corner, yes, we have the guy responsible for a song called "Electric Wire Hustle Flower" demanding machismo credentials from the former star of Degrassi: The Next Generation. But in the other, we have the best, hardest-hitting, and most consistent Common album since Be. In fact, The Dreamer/The Believer occasionally recalls the rough humanity and humble thoughtfulness of his still-untouchable mid-90s classics Resurrection and One Day It'll All Make Sense. It's hard to know where this guy still draws his creative fire from, but there are points on this record where Common raps as if his gift for slick embedded wordplay and tactile storytelling was just in a pocket he hadn't looked in for 10 years.
Much of the album's fuel comes from soul-rap veteran No I.D., who handles the majority of the production. The Chicago producer has undergone a startling creative renaissance in the last two years: Until about 2009 he seemed destined to live out his life as local legend, the Godfather of Chicago Rap and the Guy Who Taught Kanye West. Lately, though, he's become what DJ Premier used to be: the guy you hire when you want to cozy up to Unimpeachable Authenticity. Even better, his latest work hits harder and more viciously than anything he's done before. "Ghetto Dreams", featuring a fully awake Nas, is the gulliest track Common has rapped on since "The Corner". "Blue Sky" chops up ELO's "Mr. Blue Sky" into a looping, affecting plea. "Celebrate" is the best G.O.O.D. Music BBQ-jam since Kanye's "See Me Now". And the back-firing-Hooptee snare kick on "Sweet" almost lets you peek through your fingers as Common rails against "hoe-ass" rappers and informs us that he is "to hip-hop what Obama is to politics."
Common raps so hard on The Dreamer that you can almost hear his neck veins throb. And for every bit of overcompensation-- he actually cracks a bottle over a dude's head in "Raw"-- there's something vividly rendered and honest. That kind of honesty used to be Common's territory, but he surrendered it long ago to smarminess: by Finding Forever, he only seemed capable of rapping in fortune cookies. On "Gold", he paints fond memories of his early nights: "Hats from liquor stores, to avoid syphilis/ Frivolous spending/ Drunk nights with storybook endings." "Lovin' I Lost" is disarmingly humble and open-hearted about heartbreak: "I must confess, I miss the days of you laying on my chest." Of course, there's still nothing worse than a Latter-Day Common Simile, and goofy lyrics abound. But the reason The Dreamer/The Believer sticks-- and it does-- isn't because Common reclaims some musty real-dude credentials he never had: It's because something seems to have reminded him that he's not a persona, but a real, blood-pumping human.
