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Common – The Dreamer, The Believer (Review)

Published: December 26, 2011

It’s not uncommon for a musician to become an actor. It’s also not unusual for that musician to try and kick start their music career again after the acting business has slowed down for them: but, usually when someone like this comes back, they seem to have lost their spark.

The album has some simple and cliché themes, like being a dreamer, and believing in
something. I’m assuming that Common and his producers really thought that this was special, but, it’s not. It’s seen on a lot of albums, but using themes and undertones like this are very hard to pull off, and when they are, it’s an amazing work. That doesn’t mean that you can just pick a phrase or word and stick it in every song, and say “these songs relate!”.

The songs and vocals are indeed soulful, but it’s a very strange mixture of Common’s constant vulgarity and the soulful background singing of men and women. On almost every song, this is the case. Every song has a soulful hook and typical hip hop beat, accompanied by Common’s fast and hard raps. This works occasionally, but when the whole album is that, it’s very hard to distinguish between the songs.

Following the common path, (see what I did there?) of musicians-turned-actors, this album is pretty hard to call special at all. It’s boring, repetitive, and bland. It might be easy to listen to one of the songs by itself, but it’s very hard to call the album as a whole, decent. I can’t give this album anything more than a two out of five.

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