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Common VibeZ

Ninety-eight tracks across three decades — the longest single-artist collection on this blog, and one of the few catalogues that can sustain it.

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Common: the long view

A ninety-eight track career survey is a serious commitment, and the reason it works for Common is that he has had at least four distinct artistic lives: the nineties Chicago battle rapper, the Soulquarian experimentalist, the mainstream Kanye-era star, and the elder statesman making jazz records and winning Oscars.

What connects them is an unusual willingness to be wrong in public and revise. He has written songs recanting positions from earlier songs, and the catalogue reads as an argument with himself conducted over thirty years.

This set is best approached as a biography rather than a playlist, and the sequencing rewards that.

What to listen for

"The Light" is the record that made him famous outside hip-hop — a J Dilla production built on Bobby Caldwell, and one of the great love songs in the genre.

"I Used to Love H.E.R."-era material aside, "Thelonius" with Slum Village and "Aquarius" with Bilal come from the Soulquarian years, when he was recording at Electric Lady alongside D'Angelo, Erykah Badu and Questlove.

"So Far To Go" with D'Angelo is the most beautiful thing here, built on one of Dilla's final productions.

"Be (Intro)" and "They Say" come from Be (2005), the Kanye-produced album that is the most focused record he has made.

"Glory" with John Legend, from Selma, won the Academy Award, and "The Dreamer" features Maya Angelou reading.

"Pop's Rap Part 2" is one of several tracks featuring his father, Lonnie "Pops" Lynn, whose spoken pieces close a number of his albums — a running device across the catalogue and the most affecting thing in it.

"Black Kennedy" with August Greene — his trio with Robert Glasper and Karriem Riggins — is where the late-career jazz turn lands.

Go deeper

Like Water for Chocolate (2000) and Be (2005) are the two albums; Resurrection (1994) is the one Chicago purists name.

J Dilla's production catalogue is the thread that runs under the best of this, and August Greene's self-titled album is the place the story currently rests.

How to approach it: ninety-eight tracks is a biography rather than a playlist, and it rewards being heard in order. The catalogue is an argument he has been having with himself for thirty years — positions taken, later recanted in song — and the recantations only make sense if you have heard what came before them.

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