Philadelphia Weekly

photo credit: ALEX FINE

With Common coming to town, I figure now would be a good time to discuss my increasing disgust over what has become commonplace among his fans: bad-mouthing his 2002 album Electric Circus. If I hear one more person talk shit about Circus, I'm gonna punch 'em in their damn chest.

I know more than one Common diehard who would prefer his defining 1994 sophomore album Resurrection or his solid 2000 release Like Water for Chocolate, even going so far as to get into a never-ending debate over it. ("Man, I'ma be at your house on Saturday, and we'll go through it track by track, bitch!") But the more jaw-jacking I hear about Circus, the more I find myself declaring it my favorite Common album.

"I don't know a single person who bought Electric Circus, and that's a very good thing," I read on a cheeseball MySpace blog of a friend I no longer speak to because I'm just that serious about this.

I remember hearing Ludacris on one of the XM Satellite Radio rap stations one afternoon talking about how "far left" Circus is. Far left? It wasn't like ol' dude made an album full of Gregorian chant.

Just like Chocolate, it was recorded at the famed Electric Lady Studios in New York. Common also worked closely with the same producers: Roots drummer Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson, keyboardist James Poyser and the late, great J Dilla. And yet, even with all that working for it, it peaked at No. 47 on the Billboard 200 chart, and eeked out one only single, the Neptunes-produced "Come Close."

Even though Circus had its share of critical praise, audiences didn't know what to make of this hip-hop/soul/electro gumbo. It kills me how even a progressive MC like Common can make an album that's too out there for his fans, especially considering how Common spends most of Circus riffing on how people are scared shitless of something different.

"How could a nigga be so scared of change?" he asks on "New Wave," practically addressing those who are all-too-ready to dismiss his musings. "It all seems mundane in the scope of things."

Circus itself feels like a meta-rap album, a purposely polarizing project that succeeded in weeding out the listeners from the people who listen, the fearless from the fearful.

The best tracks on Circus have Common verbally taking a jackhammer to any facet of closed-mindedness, challenging his listeners to do the same. On the album's most thought-provoking track "Between Me, You & Liberation," he touches on a few subjects (pedophilia, losing a loved one to cancer) deemed too heavy for hip-hop before addressing that most taboo of hip-hop issues: dealing with a longtime friend coming out of the closet. "How could I judge him?/ Had to accept him if I truly loved him," Common raps.

I see how this could rub hip-hop heads the wrong way. Just the rundown of guest stars shows Common wanted Circus to be more than a rap album. It was obvious that Jill Scott, Cee-Lo, Bilal and Mary J. Blige would appear on his album. But how about Zap Mama's Marie Dauline, Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier and my oft-admitted man-crush Omar? That alone got it a spot in my year-end 10-best list.

Some Common apologists have said that his then-girlfriend Erykah Badu (who appears on a couple of tracks) is to blame for all this experimental, psychedelic, incense-and-tofu bullshit, something ?uestlove himself dismissed on his MySpace blog not too long ago.

?uest wrote that--next to D'Angelo's Voodoo--Circus was the best album he recorded during that whole Electric Lady era, the same era that gave us the Roots' Things Fall Apart, Badu's Mama's Gun, Bilal's 1st Born Second and many other outstanding black-music albums of the past 10 years. "I'm still holding my breath in which someone will properly place the EC project in the light it deserves," ?uestlove writes.

Well, consider this week's column a floodlight. And if I hear you talkin' shit about EC between songs at Common's show when he inevitably plays a track off it, consider yourself chest-punched.

Common performs Tues., Sept. 25, 8pm. $35-$37.50. With Q-Tip. Electric Factory, 421 N. Seventh St. 215.336.2000. www.livenation.com