01. Universal Mind Control
02. Punch Drunk Love (feat. Kanye West)
03. Make My Day (feat. Cee-Lo )
04. Sex 4 Suga
05. Announcement (feat. Pharrell)
06. Gladiator
07. Changes (feat. Muhsinah )
08. Inhale
09. What A World
10. Everywhere (feat. Martina Topley-Bird )

Via The Independent

Apart from his recent shift into movies, Common seems to be approaching his hip-hop career in a perversely roundabout manner

He’s steadily building a reputation as a psychedelically inclined philosophical liberal when all about him were sucking up the gangsta dollar, before finding his entrée into impolite society via his chum Kanye West, and finally essaying a few more directly erotic raps here in tracks such as “Punch Drunk Love” and “Sex 4 Suga”.

It’s not a role the naturally polite rhymer inhabits all that comfortably – well, you try making whoopee with lines like “Girl you can touch my forces of nature/ I’m just tryin’ to motivate ya” – so it’s a relief when, about halfway through the album, Common settles into his more familiar conscious mode, asserting his creative principles in tracks like “Gladiator” and “Changes”. “I got a purpose why I MC/ Inspire the young world to be greater than me,” he explains in the latter: “I fall awake and I dream a song/ So those little shorties will sing along.” It’s a typically modest attitude, expressed with greater subtlety than most “save the children” anthems – and the setting is likewise more intriguing than most, a return to the psychedelic hip-hop soul style of Common’s cosmic period, its shifting arrangement recalling such as the Fifth Dimension, Curtis Mayfield and Rotary Connection.

Overall Score: 4/5

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Via Timeout

It’s not quite as shocking as finding out that, say, Fiddy Cent breeds Pekinese dogs, but it’s up there. After years spent almost exclusively wrangling a style of deeply conscious, poetic hip hop – albeit with an expansion into gospel, psychedelia and alt.rock via 2002’s terrific Electric Circus – Chicago native Common has busted out of his creative ghetto. Big time. Eighth LP Universal Mind Control harks back to the block-rockin’, bass-busting, electro-rap motherlode of Afrika Bambaataa and Melle Mel, but with producers The Neptunes providing (most of) the postmodern update.

The result is unashamedly hedonistic. Common has said, ‘I created this music for the summer; it’s about feeling good,’ and – seasonal anomaly aside – he’s bang on the button. Pharrell, Kanye, Cee-Lo and Santogold join the high-profile guest list, while Common shifts his lyrical focus from his brothers and the socio-economic blight that affects their communities to booty and bling. The heartfelt ‘Changes’ and ‘Inhale’ aside, this is Common as you’ve never heard him. It’s oddly shocking to hear him declare, ‘I’m gonna touch you where the sun don’t shine,’ (on ‘Sex 4 Suga’), or, ‘This is hip hop, baby,’ (‘Announcement’), because Common simply doesn’t do smut, strut or swagger. Until now. He’s very good at it.

Overall Score: 4/6

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Via ThisIsHipHop

With the latest release by Kanye West being, for the most part, a crap fest of really addictive tracks that really aren’t that great with sub-par experimental production, the concept of universal mind control isn’t that hard to believe. The fact that there is this “sound” and this fascination with this new age non-hip hop sound by hip hop artists that seemingly brainwashes their audience effortlessly, is kind of scary, but trendy. The latest release from the usually steady, but recently lazy-on-the-microphone, Common, should be surprising because of its satisfying execution and not of the chic hip-pop style that is so ‘in’ right now. In fact, if anyone can pull off a commercially successful album while staying dedicated to his true formula, it is Lonnie Lynn. With Universal Mind Control, there is a lot to save it from being a write-off, but not enough to elevate it to any unbelievable standards of greatness.

The album starts off with the love it or hate it single, “Universal Mind Control.” Lyrically, it has flashes of brilliance: “I touch masses like a Catholic/ expensive rap sh*t/ my futures backlit/ Interact with the cat who macks and stacks my vern-ac to trash ya’ll react.” This same song also caters to a dance crowd; it’s a win-win. That lyrical gem is the ‘needle in the haystack’ of the album and evidently, Common is content with the current lyrical level he’s on with UMC. Kanye’s guest spot on “Punch Drunk Love” offers nothing and the sexually vivid Common is an awkward listen. Sex, unfortunately, is a topic Common discusses a lot on this project.

Overall Score: 75/100

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