8 'The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, March 28, 2000 COMMON PROVES SWEET ON 'CHOCOLATE' Since his 1992 debut "Can I Borrow A "Dollar?" registered on the hip-hop radar, Common has been a model for artistic growth. By listening to his first three albums, it's easy to chart his development. His first album fea- tured lightening-quick rhyming at times. By his third album "One Day It Will All Make Sense," he sacrificed speed for lyrical quality and earned himself a spot along side Rakim and KRS-ONE as one of the top hip-hop lyricists. In his latest release, "Like Water For Chocolate," Common continues on his path of making creative music that also shows his abil- itv to access the world around him, while in the process creating an early nomination for hip- hop album of the year. For "Chocolate," Common enlists one of the strongest supporting casts ever to grace a hip-hop Grade: A- album. The likes of D'Angelo, ?uestlove, Mos Conon Def, Detroit-based JayDee Like Water for and his group Slum Village Chocolate as well as DJ Premier, MCA Records among others, demonstrates Reviewed by his want to develop further Daily Arts Writer as an artist. There aren't any W. Jacarl Melton tracks produced by longtime partner NoID, and Common even admits that he moved to New York from his beloved Windy City. Despite these changes, he maintains a connection to his past that can be found in the content of his songs. The track "Heat" reminds loyal Common lis- teners of his work on his debut album, with rhyme speed being the biggest difference. The lyrics don't pertain to anything specific but serve more as a battle rhyme where he brags about himself. "I'm the cream/Com' rules every- thing," basically sums up the rhyme. One of the most memorable lines is "It's a shame I have to do white labels to keep my life stable," referring to the situation where an artist is unable to release their songs on a major label and have to opt for a smaller distribution. Despite the lack of depth, the beat Detroit's own JayDee ("Vivirant Thing" and "Breathe and Stop") creates has a bounce to it that's infectious and will definitely get some people's heads bobbing. "Dooinit" is another JayDee produced track. The beat is a little less spectacular than the one in "Heat" but still has head-nodding qualities. The lyrics focus mainly on figures in the music industry. Common has been known to attack people or trends he doesn't like (see "I Used To Love HER" or "The Bitch In Yoo") and "Dooinit" serves this purpose. Possible targets could be Puffy or even Will Smith. He doesn't mention names but enough is implied to drawn strong conclusions. The standout cut that is attracting the most attention is the DJ Premier-produced "The 6th Sense (Something You Feel)." The track has what it takes to become a hip-hop classic. Needless to say, Premo does his usual by creat- ing a track that only he can. The production works perfectly with the style and subject matter of the rhyme. Common focuses on what he does the best, observing situations in life and then offering commentary on them. The general topic is hip-hop and the effect it has on people. "I start thinkin'/how - many souls hip-hop has affected/how many dead folks this art's resur- rected/how many nations this culture's connect- ed." Common's passion about his profession can be felt in every word and every line making this one of the best hip-hop songs to come out in a while. Switching gears, Common takes a much more politically active stance on "A Song For Assata." He retells the story of freedom fighter Assata Shakur. He hopes to raise awareness on issues pertaining to police brutality and political. activism. He recounts the struggles Shakur, who now is in exile in Cuba, and her counterparts had to endure in the effort to achieve freedom for themselves as well as other black people. The most thought provoking and powerful part of the song is when a tape recording of Shakur defining freedom is played. "I know a whole lot more about what freedom isn't than what it is because I have never been free." Common does an excellent job in giving his audience a history lesson and the strings backing him up make it all that more powerful. To date, "Like Water For Chocolate" may be one of the best major label releases so far this year. Though there are tracks that are less impres- sive than others (see "A Film Called 'Pimp"'), they do not detract from the overall effort. If the beats are weak, which they rarely are, the lyrics make up for it, and vice versa. So it seems as if Common's gamble to move farther away from his realm of the familiar (NoID and Chicago) has had no dire consequences. Now one has to wonder, what is next for the man who may be the best MC today? Only the future knows. makes the group Grade: A- Pantera Reinventing the Steel EastWest Records Reviewed by Daily Arts Writer David Reamer come off as both cocky (four plat- inum albums will have that effect) and approachable by their legions of fans. So when members of the band unani- mously claim that this is the hardest record they've ever recorded, people tend to listen. Of course, the band also prefers to let its music speak for itself. The music on "Reinventing the Steel" says more than words ever could. While the band has obviously matured over the past four years, they have not slowed the pace of their thrashing. Dimebag Darrell's guitar riffs scream loud enough to make cars bleed; Vinnie Paul's breakneck backbeats are as feverish as ever; Rex Paul's basslines set a headbanging pace; and Anselmo's angst-ridden vocals haven't lost an ounce of emotion. Songs like "Goddamn Electric" and "Yesterday Don't Mean Shit" show that Pantera isn't relying on its name to. get by. Even though the songs look back on lost youth and past success, they make it clear that the band is firmly grounded in the present, and rocking hard. These Pantera 'reinvents its crunchy thrash-metal. For a significant number of music fans, the name Pantera is synony- mous with heavy metal, and for the .4 last four years. Pantera has been absent from the music scene. Now, as frontman Phil Anselmo proclaims with the release of "Reinventing the Steel": "Our fans can breathe ... easy f' - We're back." Pantera is back, and " to many people, including the band, that means heavy metal is back, too. The members of Pantera have always been proud of their straight- forward attitude, both with the media and with the fans. Somehow, this tracks, along with less meditative songs like "You've Gotta Belong to it" are as heavy as anything the band has released in its career. The album's one major downside is its length. With four years of plannin9 behind the project, one would think the band could come up with an hour, possi- bly more, of new music. Sadly, the album's ten tracks clock out under 44 minutes, less than ten minutes for every year that the band was out of the studio. This may leave fans wondering just what the band has been up to in the last four years, since they obviously weren't writ- ing songs. For Pantera, the answer may just be that quality comes before quantity, anO "Reinventing the Steel" is prime materi- al from start to finish. This, the band's first self-produced album, shows com- mitment and work above and beyond that of your average metal band. Pantera's attitude can perhaps be summed up with two of the song titles from "Reinventing the SteeL" "Yesterday Don't Mean Shit" and "We'll Grind that Axe for a Lon* Time," voice the band's beliefs about their past and future. Not only will Pantera keep grinding away and lov- ing it, "Reinventing the Steel" shows that the band's flair and quality won't suffer with the passage of time. They kick as much ass now as they did ten years ago, and with any luck, they'll still be thrashing in another ten. Timony peaks on 'Mountains' Anyone interested in the creative possibilities of music needs to listen to the work of Mary Timonv. Like many of the artists released by Matador, Timonv takes the sort of poetic lyrics you actually would want to read and adds a unique style of mellow guitar rock elevated to brilliance by non-traditional arrangements and the Grade: A- Mary Timony Mountains Matador Reviewed by Daily Arts Editor Jason Birchmeier inclusion of pianos, synthesizers, flutes, violins and other abstract nstruments. Many people may be familiar with Timony's past work as the brains behind the Boston-based band Helium. The band generat- ed quite a bit of buzz back in 1994 during the waning moments of the grunge revolu- tion with their debut EP, "Pirate Prude." This masterpiece prostitution. Though highly allegorical and bleeding with feminist teenage angst, Timony's charismatic gui- tar work and lyrics instantly caught the attention of bands such as Sonic Youth, who were delighted to invite Helium on their tour and to play at Lollapalooza. Now six years later after less and less extreme albums with Helium, Timonv has abandoned her dis- tortion pedals, angry lyrics and even her band. Her music still radiates with her brilliantly fantastic lyrics. which now more resemble nursery rhymes than night- marish allegories. Song titles such as "Dungeon Dance" and "Rider on a Stormy Sea" are just the tip of the ice- berg. Each song resembles the sort of fable that seems childish on the surface but glimmers with deeper mean- ing and allegory. Her music has become equally as light-hearted with a near abandonment of the distorted guitar sound that made albums such as "Pirate Prude" and "Dirt of Luck" such masterpieces. Instead, Timony has turned increasingly towards the piano as her prime source of melody while using the guitar more as a shading tool, a subtle sound buried deep beneath her vocals and melodies. Some songs such as the opening track, "Dungeon Dance," don t even use guitars while songs such as "Valley of One Thousand Perfumes" use guitar riffs as the driving force. In the end, whether one prefers the sonic palette of guitar tone that Timony once practiced or her new emphasis on melody, one cannot deny the fact that this infamous woman knows how to write brilliant songs that get increasingly melodic and literate with every album. Andy returns with 'Flood' of reggiae soul' gleamed with some of the most distorted sounding gui- tar-driven sonic ferocity ever captured. On top of the monolithic fuzzy guitar riffs capable of making the masses cower, Timony dropped a set of conceptually linked fantastic ramblings dealing with vampires and Detroit's own Esham goes national with new 'Bootleg' During the 1970s, Horace Andy was the Al Green of reggae vocalists, his voice both powerfully gruff and sweetly fragile. After fading into obscurity in the 1980s, Andy resur- rected his career by lending his voice to several recordings by Massive Attack, the British trip-hoppers whose popularity among the college- aged set gave Andy an entirely new audience. But although his newfound notoriety has led him in recent years to re-release several of his 1970s clas- sics, "Living in the Flood" is Andy's first album of new material in more than a decade. It's also a return to his roots: Recorded at Tuff Gong studios in Kingston, Jamaica, "Flood" fea- The- infamous Detroit rapper Esham has become a legend in the rap underground. Since 1990 when he was a teenager, Esham has been releasing album I after album of Grade: B+ Esham Bootleg Overcore/TVT Reviewed by Daily Arts Writer Jason Birchmeier hardcore rhymes with a harsh, self- produced. style of beats that often take on the feel of hard rock. Though many outside of the Detroit area probably aren't familiar with viously unreleased tracks, only three of the 16 tracks cannot be found on previous albums. Instead of a collec- tion of rarities, "Bootleg" functions more as a sampler of Esham's past work, drawing from the infamous rapper's deep back catalog of nine full-length albums and several EPs. Much of Esham's early work on "Bootleg" will no doubt shock those unfamiliar with his ferocity. Songs such as "Redrum" from 1990's "Boomin' Words From Hell" are about as hardcore as rap can get. This partic- ular song samples the bassline from Funkadelic's "You and Your Folks" to give itself a funky yet rocking beat. The fact that most of these songs are composed of samples and were record- ed on low budget equipment in the early to mid-'90s also give them a very rough and gritty feel quite unlike today's polished hip-hop. Another early Esham track, "KKKill the Fetus" samples a dis- Esham, he deserves recognition for innovating the rap meets heavy metal sound that has become the latest trend. "Bootleg" represents the first time that Esham has partnered with a major label to help spread his wicked reach outside of Detroit. Though it -paades itself as a collection of pre- torted electric guitar for its beats and George Clinton's monologue from "Maggot Brain" to give it a very creepy feel. Lyrics such as "My sui- cide solution is a 38 revolver/ I'm your problem solver/ Your life if full of horror/ Some are born today and some will die tomorrow" are down- right gruesome and will instantly alienate many, but keep in mind that Esham seems to get a bit less wicked on his more recent songs such as "Outcha Atmosphere" and "Twerk Your Body" from 1999's "Mail Dominance." The bottom line is that Esham is just far too insane and dark for the masses. His style of music - self- described as "acid rap" - makes NWA sound weak and Limp Bizkit sound like the Backstreet Boys. Anyone out there looking for some hardcore rap with a deranged sense of reality, Esham's "Bootleg" functions as a per- fect introduction to a sound quite unlike anything currently on the mar- ket. Though not nearly as fresh as Esharn's latest album as Natas, "Www.com" - an amazing rap album produced with real basses and guitars - "Bootleg" should earn Esham the respect and album sales that he deserves after producing some totally unique music in the shadowy ghettos of East Detroit for a decade. the Daily's archives online at ww w.michigandaily.com Grade: B Horace Andy Living in The Flood Melankolic Reviewed by Daily Arts Writer Christian Hoard tures several of Jamaica's top session players and revives the soulful crooning and laid-back grooves that characterized much of Andy's early work. Since the songs are a little where politics is concerned. ThouI he talks of "One love, one Jah, one destination" in the CD's liner notes, he doesn't spend much time dreaming up scenes of Rastafarian utopia ,on "Flood." The disc's title track, eo- written by former Clash singer Soe Strummer, finds him complaining bitterly of poverty and moral corrup- tion, his words conjuring images of darkness and despair. ( "Doldrums," it's a good friend who's drowning in the spiritual flood: "Nothing special/an empty vessel/ seems to wrestle/with your time/In the rain, you struggle to swim." But because Andy counters the minor-key darkness of songs like "After All" with plenty of upbeat, bouncy tracks ("True Love," "Right Time") "Flood" is for the most part a fun and energetic record. And in spite of his occasional melancholia aO anti-poverty vitriol, Andy suggests that it's not politics that offers salva- tion, but love - whether it's love for your fellow man or simply the dreamy, Lovers Rock stuff he sings about on "Girl of My Dreams."_ lacking in memorable melodies, it's the musicians' rhythmic punch and Andy's consistently charming vocals that keep "Flood" afloat. Clive "Azul" Hunt's production gives "Flood" a nice, hi-fi glossiness, but unlike many dub poets of the early eighties, neither he nor Andy try to stuff too many sounds into each track, instead sticking to the guitar-key- boards-bass-drums format of tradi- tional reggae for most of the record. Lyrically, the 49-year-old Andy is no youthful idealist, at least not Breaking Records Grading System Bell's Oberon Killian's Red Labatt's Blue D - Bud Light F - Natty Light - If you miss a week of Breaking Records, you can check out M 1IIC ICQ II ! BG° Q C I f DII 1C m IT'S NOT TOO LATE-SO COME IN TODAY Career-Planning Er Placement wants you to know jw that many internships have deadlines as late as LIVE AND LEARN ~ Student Discounts U21bl