“I believe in truth, truth… see you next lifetime.” – Lonnie “Pops” Lynn (RIP), “Pop’s Belief”

Let’s talk about why Common is one of my favorite rappers.  There are a number of reasons both chronicled on WiW and otherwise that go into the why of my respect and admiration for Lonnie Lynn, but one thing that touched me more than anything was how his father was featured on the closing track on the majority of his albums.  The word slinger would drop knowledge in the form of spoken word/poetry and end every song with a reference to infinity.  On Be he ended his challenge to “be” with the ultimate charge: to be eternal.  On Finding Forever the man ended with “God’s memory is forever”.  On The Dreamer/The Believer he said, almost eerily, what I quoted in the first sentence of this piece.

There’s a powerful legacy behind that kind of prophetic voice.  So while my dream collab of Lonnie Lynn and Papa Wu talking shop at the bodega is an impossibility now, I can always reference the bulk of Common’s albums for that knowledge.  Keep that in your back pocket: I’ll be referencing it again later.  Let’s advance a bit to John Legend, an R&B maven who came into his own with a blockbuster album, some blockbuster songs and a lot of music that drew attention to his tendency or knowledge of being unfaithful (listen to Get Lifted again and tell me how many songs have nothing to do with infidelity).  But cheating aside, he was one of Kanye’s more successful signings.  Now you have a light-skinned R&B superstar, one of the trademarks of a successful label in black music nowadays.  He’s successful, he’s praised, he’s now married, and some of his best featured work puts him alongside amazing rappers.  The Roots’ front man Black Thought is one; Common is another.  Now you have one of the trademarks of a successful label in black music pairing up with one of the legendary rappers of Chicago, and while Team Light Skinned may be a crude name (and horribly insensitive) but the pair got together on Be for “Faithful” and “They Say”, to excellent results.  Maybe this was a terrific collaborative team, like Common and Bilal, or John Legend and Pusha T.

And… well, it is.  Common and John Legend do possess a natural chemistry, so it’s a shame that the two don’t collaborate more often.  When they do come together they play off of each other and tackle the passions of people running their mouth and, in the case of “Faithful”, infidelity in addition to earthly divinity.  Keep that in your back pocket too, I’m building up to something.  On Christmas Day in 2014 Ava DuVernay’s Selma was released to theaters, and the result was almost instantaneous.  The film was lauded: the acting, the music, the direction, the cinematography, people went to theaters or their computer screens and indulged in the film that might well have gotten pushed for early release to ride the wave of the Ferguson protests, much like D’Angelo’s Black Messiah.  Having not seen it yet I won’t comment on the quality of the film.  I hear good things but until I see it its merely a movie.  Now, with Oscar season upon us, the movie has been nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Song.  I have a number of serious issues with this but this is still a music site (for now).  Common and Legend came together to perform “Glory”, the standout track from the film and the protest song for the new generation. 

Yeah.  It’s that.

I’m not impressed by the song, and it isn’t so much because it’s a bad song – which it isn’t – but because it isn’t anything “special”.  Common’s greatest flaw as a rapper is sounding familiar without bringing anything fresh to the mix, and John Legend’s failing is being pigeonholed into being the go-to black activist in song, relegated to hooks and bridges like an autotune-less T-Pain.  This is disappointing because Common comes from the legacy of the emotive fellow Lonnie Lynn, a man who with each passing album delivered something fresh, something new, something eternal.  One of the reasons I praise The Dreamer/The Believer so much is because it harkened the emcee to a flow similar to that of Be and, even before that, Resurrection, even showing his fangs as he took shots at a certain light skinned musician who might just be the type to nurse a baby bird he found on the street.  On the other hand, John Legend sounds so standard on these types of collaborations now that his normally powerful voice falls so easily into the background of similar songs.

And I know what people are saying: it’s a good song and it has a powerful message!  Yes, I agree wholeheartedly.  I think it’s a decent song and the message is powerful, if cliché.  But so was Same Love.  So was The Ghetto.  So was The Message.  A socially conscious song is just that: socially conscious.  What makes a song good goes beyond its genre.  In this case, “Glory” is disappointing because it doesn’t utilize the artists to the fullest, not because it’s a bad song.  On a scale from A to F it easily falls into B+ territory, but these are the people that brought us “Faithful” and “They Say”.  Those songs were amazing, and that’s the standard (speaking of Standard, Common…) these two should aspire to.  I don’t care if the song is for a critically acclaimed movie: if it isn’t great then it just isn’t great. 

I just want a good John Legend featured song that deviates from his obsession with cheating, and no, “Magnificent” doesn’t count.  I said a GOOD song.

If nothing else, I will offer this: theatrical context is capable of shifting someone’s opinion.  While I still have no innate desire to watch the film, my curiosity as a would-be filmmaker (screenwriter) will eventually, sooner or later, draw me to watch the movie, and perhaps I’ll have a different opinion of the track.  As it stands I’ve already heard the studio version and a cover version performed at my church, and they both sound nice enough.  But as it stands, I have to throw this track into the slew of Ferguson protest songs that have come from everyone and their mother lately.  Don’t fret though: it ain’t like this is the Game’s song.