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Miracles, sometimes, happen.
It happened that two living legends of hip-hop, rapper Common Sense and New York producer Pete Rock, decided to join forces to save the world from contemporary bleakness and remind everyone what happened to the soul.
The result of this meeting is The Auditorium Vol. 1, a work that looks to the past without being nostalgic and that stands on completely different (I would dare say astral) levels compared to so many, too many albums released in recent decades.
"From the stellar regions of the soul": this is how "Dreamin'" begins, an incredible tribute to the masters of black music (Prince, Aretha Franklin, etc...) and to some friends gone too soon. A tear, I warn you, is just around the corner ("Seen Trugoy the Dove, he began to fly/Told him, Pos and Mase, 'De La will never die'").
The rest of the tracklist (fifteen tracks for just over an hour of listening) confirms the positive impressions suggested by the beginning: we are witnessing a perfectly successful collaboration.
On one side, we have Pete Rock, who selects the best of African-American music and arranges it on never-trite drum metrics; on the other side, there is Common, ready to fit his rhymes with an exquisite technique and far from any vulgarity for its own sake.
The two, it must be said, are no longer in their twenties, a detail that inevitably reflects on the overall mood of the project.
As a result, most of the tracks have a relaxed atmosphere, with vocal samples, soft guitars, and singing never banal. There are also more upbeat moments, like the two singles that have so far driven the album, namely "Wise up" and the exceptional "All Kind of Ideas", where we find a Pete Rock also in form at the microphone ("I'm soul brother uno, black from the future/Make beats on the table if I break my computer/And still make hits like I used to/Keep your top five, I'm God's favorite producer").
Few features (Bilal, Posdnuos, Jennifer Hudson, and PJ), no noticeable dips, and standards almost always high from start to finish.
This is how I would like to comment on every album belonging to this genre, even though the possibilities, I realize, are slim. That's not important, because The Auditorium Vol. 1 is a lesson taught by two masters who remind us that hip-hop is not just champagne, big cars, and dubious jewelry, but it is the mirror of a decades-old culture with roots firmly planted elsewhere (perhaps in the legendary Kings Theatre depicted on the cover, home to numerous concerts by many soul, funk, and beyond musicians).
In short, paying homage to innovate and go beyond: this is the main goal, and I would say that with The Auditorium Vol. 1 our heroes complete the mission in an extraordinarily brilliant way.
A must-have.
Two guys under the guise of the Supreme Being
The evidence of things not seen
Dreams combined in beats and rhymes
Rubs on turntables, car seats recline
Eternal sunshine, we push the art form
I can hear the ancestors saying "Keep on" (Keep on)
Keep on, keep on (Keep on)
Keep on, keep on
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