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Getting Out Our Dreams Presents Common Be - Limited Edition Instrumental Album. Electric Circus cost and won Common some fans. It was very exploratory, especially so for a rap album released in 2002, containing developments -- some of which soared, some of which sank -- that few longtime followers could have foreseen. Listeners either felt Common was picking up fresh new inspirations, or that he was just being distracted by a whole lot of ill-fitting nonsense. With Be, it seems the MC has realized that not every album that's sprawling and eclectic is as good as Electric Ladyland or Songs in the Key of Life. More notably, he might've been struck by the fact that a high percentage of excellent albums are around 40-minutes in length and are built on a unified sound. Be is highly concentrated, containing 11 songs and involving two producers and a small number of guests. It's a 180-degree turn from Electric Circus, and in a bizarre way it's both a progression and a back-to-basics move. Kanye West and J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) are key to the album's steadiness, rooting the sound in '70s soul and soul-jazz. That's no shake-up, but the two producers deserve some form of award for stringing together a consistent sequence of productions that is never monotonous, dull, or all that flashy. Even the lead single "The Corner," heard well before Be's release, falls into the fabric of the album on first listen, as if that were where it belonged all along. Lyrically, Common comes back down to Earth -- the narratives are sharp as ever, the gripes are more like observations than screeds, and the eccentricities need to be teased out rather than swatted away. Be isn't likely to be referred to by anyone as groundbreaking, but it's one of Common's best, and it's also one of the most tightly constructed albums of any form within recent memory. [This version of the album is solely instrumental.
Condition:NEW. Storage wear on top left corner.
TRACK LISTINGS
A1 Be (Intro) 2:24
A2 The Corner 3:46
A3 GO! 3:44
B1 Faithful 3:33
B2 Testify 2:36
B3 Love Is... 4:10
C1 Chi-City 3:27
C2 The Food 3:26
C3 Real People 2:48
D1 They Say 3:57
D2 It's Your World (Part 1 & 2)
Co-producer – James Poyser, Karriem Riggins 8:24
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