Common

When it comes to the old adage “You can judge a man by the company he keeps,” Common is no exception. His unique style of socially conscious rap was largely defined by his association with hip-hop collective the Soulquarians and his continued collaboration with innovative musicians like ?uestlove and De La Soul. Yet on his new album, “Universal Mind Control,” the aging rapper replaces those influences with newer artists like Kanye West and Chester French. Common’s entrance into a new crowd implies a baldly careerist effort to modernize his sound. The result is a resolutely generic club rap album entirely devoid of the musical experimentation and rhythmic virtuosity that defined Common’s early collaborators.

Early in his career, Common gained a reputation for focusing on social and political issues instead of gangsterism and consumerist machismo. From the first verse of his new album’s title track, it’s obvious that this has changed: Common now seems primarily concerned with “Body movin’, showin’, groovin’, stylin’, and bein’ fly.” This superficial self-promotion is par for the course in mainstream hip-hop, but it seems entirely incompatible with the social politics of Common’s earlier work.

With this stylistic shift, Common’s lyrics are now indistinguishable from those of the mindless gangster rap he rejected in the 90s. A particularly egregious example is “Sex 4 Suga,” which includes some of the most bluntly misogynistic one-liners imaginable. The title of the song, however, is somewhat ambiguous: does it imply prostitution or a promise of raunchy sex for Common’s “suga”? The lyrics are not particularly helpful at deciphering this enigma, suggesting both the former and the latter. Lines like, “I don’t mind bein’ behind,” “I’ma touch you where the sun don’t shine,” and “Get on my vine and we can climb” convey nothing beyond base sexual innuendo.

One thing that can be completely ruled out, however, is the possibility of Common’s sex object getting any literal sugar of her own: her trim physique is of utmost importance, and her only job is to “sweat like [she] was losin’ pounds.”

Common certainly has more technical ability than other rappers making generic club music, but on “Universal Mind Control,” any rhythmic complexity in his delivery is completely negated by the oppressive regularity of the underlying beats. The production is slick but entirely unimaginative. The first six tracks on the album all begin with the same technique, a four-beat repetition of the first measure of the instrumental track followed immediately by the full instrumental and vocal tracks. The album is entirely devoid of live instrumentation, as if it had emerged of its own volition from a primordial soup of ProTools loops on some highly-paid producer’s laptop.

Common’s flow once sounded smooth and natural over the wide variety of musical influences he sampled from; now he sounds stilted over even the simplest beats. On the awkward mix of light disco and club rap that is “What A World,” featuring ex-Harvard popsters Chester French, Common’s delivery is reduced to simple monosyllabic rhymes with the same monotonous meter: “I met a boy from Chicago, had dreams to be a star / And make a way, and get some pay, and drive a fancy car.”

Nevertheless, Common’s rapping seems practically virtuosic compared to the album’s disappointing guest appearances by Cee-Lo, Chester French, and Kanye West. Kanye’s performance on “Punch Drunk Love” is particularly disappointing. He contributes nothing more than Auto-Tuned crooning and a repetitive chorus that barely qualifies as rhythmic talking.

The failure of “Universal Mind Control” goes far beyond monotony and lack of innovation. Common spent decades defining himself as a socially conscious artist distinct from the mindlessness of the mainstream, but his newest work, in terms of ethos and quality, contains little to no trace of his former self.

—Mark A. VanMiddlesworth can be reached at mvanmidd@fas.harvard.edu.