Back in 2003, "Electric Circus" saw Common crowned Hip-Hop's psychedelic journeyman extraordinaire and, with the help of The Roots' drummer and producer Amir Thompson, he created one of the year's most critically feted albums. The follow-up again finds his taste in production assistance to be faultless; Kanye West is the man in charge. The only other production credits go to one-time Slum Village mainman, Jay Dee.
Perhaps it's West's ubiquity throughout "Be" or simply testimony to the force of his musical vision, but every track on the album is coloured by a lazy Sunday morning take on his trademark sound. Whereas the excesses of "Electric Circus"'s pretensions to Psych-Rock-Hop were only just reigned in by a couple of Neptunes-penned pop moments, "Be" returns Common squarely to traditional territory with beanie hat hip-hop the order of the day.
Things begin, perhaps unwisely, with a track so lush and yet so tantalisingly short that the first couple of times you find yourself listening to the record through and hoping for a reprise. What follows it is largely underwhelming, the sort of conscious soul-infused hip-hop that the Chicagoan has been knocking out since 1992's "Can I Borrow A Dollar?" Despite that, the calibre of hired help here ensures there's much to enjoy but when Common isn't aiming to reinvent the rap wheel, the artlessness of his flow becomes more of an impediment.
Never one to underestimate his own gifts, he describes the title, "Be", as "simply to do without trying hard." The moment at which the art becomes the artist's native tongue. "On every album, I found myself trying to innovate a new music," he explains in the notes that accompany the release. "This album, I felt like letting it be. If it sounds like something I've done before, so be it".
Paradoxically, when he does put his back into it – on the slightly over contrived "Testify" in which he tells the story of a lover beating a case by testifying against her own boyfriend – he gels best with Kanye's production. The sampled soul testifying becomes the chorus that drives the track. Otherwise it's clear that West works best when he's whipping up a storm of chest beating for a triumphant Jay-Z or digging through the beats that were too good to sell, those that soundtrack the latest dispatches from his own ever-expanding ego.
The resulting record is much as Common's words suggest, lazily accomplished without ever truly igniting, a classy update on a slightly dated hip-hop sound. Not quite the record that many were hoping to result from such an illustrious pairing.
