Let Love Rule.
'Love Is'...the name of quite possibly rapper/actor and now as of this year author Common's greatest song off his signature set and hip-hop classic, the beautiful 'Be' album. "How beautiful love can be/On the streets love is hard to see/It's a place I got to be/Loving you is loving me", Lonnie Rashid Lynn sings and raps on this evoking, epic track that soul samples Motown's greatest of all time, Marvin Gaye's 'God Is Love' and with all his heart reaches for a higher power. All fists held high before he started 'Finding Forvever' with timeless in tribute G.O.O.D. Music alongside the best of Kanye West. Love is also more than a verb. But it's this doing word that inspired Common to release his first memoir this year with the autobiographical and all the world reaching, 'Let Love Have The Last Word'. Which really is a read that should grace more than your Kindle's and coffee tables, but your bedside every night and following morning as you take his great word of wisdom as gospel. Now naming the same (makes sense for all this interconnected correlation after the 'Like Water For Chocolate' rapper Common's first book was named after his album 'One Day It Will All Make Sense'), hot off the Summer heels of owning all your Barnes and Noble in a different game like legendary Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writing Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes sribes, Common is scoring again with a musical accompaniment that might just be his best album since the 'Be' and 'Finding Forvever', back-to-back classics. Certainly Com's most consistent and cohesive. And it's not like 'The Dreamer...The Believer', 'Nobody's Smiling' and 'Black America Again' weren't rap greats from the God themselves. Even the 'Universal Mind Control' like the critically underrated, experimental, 'Electric Circus'. But 'Let Love' that literally had 'The Last Word' cut out of it before it was pressed is no soundtrack to his storybook. Even if it's moving themes and inspirations run through its influence and taught message. More it's the next chapter in the classic career of Common. Sense made for all the people. As the greatest, most mature hip-hop head and star of this generation like a rocking Lenny Kravitz acting too let's love rule.
Love is...Oscar winning like Gaga 'Star Is Born', Best Original Song 'Glory' with John Legend for 'Selma' from the man who kicked 'John Wick's' ass. And that's the boogeyman people. Pencil this is. And you thought the 'Chapter 3', 'Always Be My Maybe' meta classic cameo, 'Toy Story 4' Kaboom, 'Cyberpunk' CGI breathtaking moment, 'Bill and Ted' excellent adventure and bogus journey reunion filming and 'Matrix 4' announcement made this the year of Keanu. But Cassian has wrote another album and inked his own book in kind. And if he didn't take that knife out his aorta in the NYC Subway then he's still out there somewhere. 'Let Love' is allowed to begin with the 'Good Morning Love' atmospheric awakening with Samora Pinderhughes as Common raps, "Walking with the Lord, I see footprints/My mama always told me use my good sense/Common always looking for the good sense/Since we all got good in our essence/In the hood sense, we all good anyway/That's why you always hear another dollar, 'nother day/I see the day as a new beginning" and Samora sings along about washing away the pain and making it to the another day, God is love willing. Then on the Daniel Caesar assisted 'HER Love' Common finally gives us his trilogy concluding sequel love song to hip-hop. Rapping and referencing 'Moment Of Clarity', "When I'm in you, I feel home/We in the house of love, no lie/Appreciate you more as time goes by/When it's truly true, it don't die/I see you in L.A., I see you in N.Y/I see you in the A, I see you in the Chi/I hear you when JAY still make the song cry/Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like common sense." Showing he still loves her, no 'used to' about it in his best beat rap ballad to the heart since there was 'The Light'. 'Dwele's Interlude' let's 'The People' singer rip those vocal chords in this inspired intermission that is instrumental in its influence. But it's BJ The Chicago Kid appearing on two tracks like A$AP Rocky did back-to-back with the 'Lust For Life' of Lana Del Rey (her new 'NFR album goes up against C's 'L, L' this week, the most beautiful release since 'I, I' by Bon Iver), who sounds like the new Dwele. And finding 'Forever Your Love' and the 'Memories Of Home' has us hoping for a collaborative album from the two brothers from the city of wind.
Love is...being stronger than 'Hercules' as Mr. Keys on the keys Swizz Beats gives Common a new banger with his big beat muscling up in the studio weight room as Com gets into a corner store tussle, botching an armed robbery as the video cameras record it all for one of his best music videos in years and the same week an attack of a 50ft Lana Del Rey 'Doin' Time' comes through and Snoop crushes the buildings in L.A. But Chicago's finest isn't die bringing change to the Windy City like Barack. The Obama of rap still has out vote like our President is still black. On the halftime of 'Fifth Story' the fifth track sees Leikeli47 turn spoken word into rapping, into singing for a great hook bridged to a chorus we can all sing along too. Then Common shows 'Crib Love' with the legendary A-Track for the def jam 'Leaders' as Common shows just how much of a hip-hop head he is as this leader of the old and new school like still asking if he can borrow a dollar with Common Sense rides this classic rap beat like a parallel park. "I'm from the City of Wind, that's another win/Take the L, green line, red line, get your paper, headlines/Tryna feed your fam, get fed time/It happens, trappin' and rappin' got us backed in/To a corner, it's normal for black men/The Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley reenactment/Savion with a beard, yo, I'm tapped in." Did you have your seatbelt on? Common continues this streak tough streak going it alone on, the kinetic in title and track, 'My Fancy Free Future Love'. But real heart like family and the late, great pops raps are shown on the Jill Scott beautifully assisted seven minute seal of a father's love to his daughter, birth to graduation on 'Show Me That You Love'. "Embedded in emotion, I'm open, hopin' whoever's/Calling's all in for the low-key, it was O-M-O-Y-E/I read my daughter's name slowly, I'm asleep, sleepin'", Lynn raps in testament tribute as Scott signs "show me that you love/show me that you care". In Common's most personal song and writing since his chapter about his baby girl the "daughter who is now (his) teacher" in the 'Let Love Have The Last Word' memoir. But the last word in this neo rapper who knows Keanu, a week after the release of the neo soul of legend Raphael Saadiq's 'Jimmy Lee' and another hip hop legend and rap icon in Missy Elliott's 'Iconology' EP, belongs to brining back Marvin Gaye's 'God Is Love' with soul man of the moment and a young man who belongs in the age of Motown in Mr. Leon Bridges. And fittingly in an album where love is in the title of almost every track the words, ""Love is love" became the mantra/The montage for creation, we need it in relation/When two ships pass, one love is the flotation/It's what God used to put the planet in rotation/It's what the culture used to build a hip hop nation/From the basement to the attic, where cookie show for magic/It's what we told the world when we said our lives matter/Turn the student to a master, hustler to a pastor/That's why I'm a rapper, it's all that I'm after." As taking us to the river Bridges sings out, "cause you are the light". And THAT is the last word. Because love is...this. TIM DAVID HARVEY.
Playlist Picks: 'HER Love', 'Show Me That You Love', 'God Is Love'.
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