Album Review: Common - Nobody's Smiling
By Sam Kayuha, Contributor
[Def Jam/ARTium; 2014]
Rating: 7.5/10
Key Tracks: “Speak My Piece,” “Nobody’s Smiling”
For better or worse, Common’s career can be boiled down to a single lyric by Jay Z on The Black Album's “Moment of Clarity:” “Truthfully I wanna rhyme like Common Sense / But I did five mil / I ain’t been rhyming like Common since.” Already well known among hip-hop heads, Hova’s shoutout (which could be taken as praise or a slight, depending on perspective), along with a verse on “Get ‘Em High” from Kanye West’s The College Dropout, tossed the artist formerly known as Common Sense into the mainstream consciousness. Even before releasing what is arguably his best album, Be, in 2005, Common found himself added to the pantheon of great “conscious” rappers such as Talib Kweli and Mos Def.
Common’s output has been consistent since 2005 and even as he finds his relevance waning in today’s Internet-driven rap world, he is still able to spur excitement with the promise of new music. Nobody’s Smiling, the Chicago native’s 10th album, is produced by Common himself as well as a man known as the Godfather of Chicago hip-hop, No I.D.
The beats are a slightly updated take on the soul sampled, drum-heavy rhythms used by Common during his prime. This proves a wise choice; 2008’s Universal Mind Control saw him experimenting with electronic and EDM beats and the results were less than stellar.
Common is generally consistent with the topics he covers on Nobody’s Smiling, focusing on the reality of life on the streets of Chicago. Now an elder statesman in the rap world, Common is no longer living on the South Side but retains an interesting perspective on the tragic violence that now besmirches his hometown. “No Fear” is a fictional account of a kid on the streets, taking you into a world where the protagonist of Lupe Fiasco’s “Hip-Hop Saved My Life” never made it big.
In case you forgot that Common was a member of G.O.O.D. Music, feature-rapper extraordinaire Big Sean shows up on the single “Diamonds.” Luckily his presence does not ruin the song, although it’s still not quite clear why great rappers want him on their tracks.
“Speak My Piece” chops and screws a vocal sample from Biggie’s classic “Hypnotize” and adds some electric drums to spawn one of the best beats on the album. This is the single track in which the instrumental overshadows Common's rhymes. The brilliance of No I.D. is that he can craft beautiful beats that almost never overpower the rapping but instead meld with it to make the song feel completely cohesive, but the instrumental on this track can't be kept out of the spotlight.
Halfway through the record, the title track brings the listener back to the realities of life in Chicago. Lines such as, “Where the chief and the President come from / Pop out, pop pills, pop guns / On the deck when the ops come / Pop some, ops come,” expose the dichotomy of success in two completely different definitions of the word--that of President Obama and Chief Keef.
Nobody’s Smiling is a rare find these days--conscious rap that isn’t overly preachy, just realistic. Common speaks his piece as he sees it. And in today’s rap game, listeners could use some honesty.
