Electric Circus
Rock & roll has grabbed Common by the neck and given him a good shake. With its heavy, multilayered sound,Electric Circusis steeped in the Chicago-born and Brooklyn-based rapper’s newfound love forPink Floyd,Traffic, and, above all,Jimi Hendrix. But, like many new converts to anything, Common goes a little off the deep end. His ambitious quest to expand the boundaries of hip-hop is crammed to the gills with a thousand motifs and is a little toobusyto be a complete success. Perhaps not surprisingly, Common’s rhymes (sample lyric: "my mind screams likeAl Greento stay together!") take a distant second place to the complex musical landscape he’s fashioned. In addition, a sidereal array of vocalists (includingStereolab’s Laetitia Sadier,Mary J. Blige,Jill Scott,Cee-Lo,Bilal, and Common’s main squeeze,Erykah Badu) and musicians (Prince,Bobbi Humphrey,Nicholas Payton) add to the sonic density. All in all,Electric Circusmightn’t strike the universal chord that Common sought, but it’s a bold, elaborate project that's definitely worth a listen.--Rebecca Levine