As Common plays "Universal Mind Control," the opener to his Dec. 9 album of the same name, he can't help but pop-lock a little bit as he mouths the words along with the track. By his own admission, Common's records have never been known as club bangers but that’s definitely about to change. While attending his live shows’ after-parties last year, he noticed a distinct pattern while everyone celebrated.
"My own DJ wasn't playing none of my songs and I realized I needed something for people to rock in the clubs," he explains to the small group of media folk assembled at New York City’s Legacy Studios. It's almost as if Common only recently noticed that he had a certain image that the rest of us assumed he was cultivating intentionally. Never content to sit back and do the expected, in early 2008 he began work on the Invincible Summer EP that eventually grew into this full album, Universal Mind Control.
While much of Universal Mind Control is comprised of dance records, don't think that Common is somehow compromising himself. He still injects his own high-minded take on music into each track and, with the help of The Neptunes and Mr. DJ of OutKast infamy, conducts experiments on sound.
"We wanted to take the music to the future and do things that I had never done before and they had never done before," asserts Common. Mission accomplished: even for a production team known for diversity, UMC breaks new ground.
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