MusicCOMMON HAS ALWAYS STRIVED
for earnestness, fashioning himself
as a rap superhero with lessons
to be taught and truths to be told.
That thread continues on his 12th
studio album, the meandering Let
Love. “Escape rooms with glasses
of wine/Just another crutch for my
brokenness/A term that I got from
my therapist/As a black man I feel
like I should be sharing this,” he
rhymes over the lilting piano of
“Good Morning Love.” On “HER
Love”—a quasi-sequel to the rap-
per’s 1994 ode to hip-hop, “I Used
to Love H.E.R.”—Common shouts
out a new generation of MCs
(YG, Lil Uzi Vert, Nipsey Hussle)
over the shimmering synths of an
unreleased J Dilla beat. Mean-
while, album standout “Memories
of Home,” about Common’s rough-
and-tumble upbringing in Chicago,
is evocative of What’s Going On-
era Marvin Gaye.
Yet for a project billed as a com-
panion piece to a memoir (May’s
Let Love Have the Last Word),
Let Love often feels anticlimactic,
lacking the introspection, clever
wordplay (see: eye-roll-worthy
lines off Love like “I pray for a
woman so I say amen”), and fire of
both its literary counterpart and
Common’s 2016 LP, Black America
Again. Important sentiments may
abound here, but they’re missing
a solid follow-through. B–CommonALBUM Let Love
L A B E L
+ GENRE Loma Vista Recordings Hip-hop
REVIEW BY Alex Suskind
@AlexJSuskindtry
neo-traditional), and artists (from
Hank Williams to Garth Brooks) in
the familiar Burns style and winds up
explicating the roots of a genre that
has traveled from walking the line to
riding the old town road. In the early
episodes, the considerable and
sometimes overlooked African-
American contribution is also
explored. “It’s not ‘politically correct’
to tell this story,” Burns says. “It’s
actually correct to tell this story.
“Everybody who’s foundational—
A.P. Carter, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank
Williams, Bill Monroe, and Johnny
Cash—all have African-American
tutor[s]. The banjo is from Africa.
Let’s stop pretending that [country
music] is only one thing,” he says.
“Once we separate the wheat
from the chaff, once you start talk-
ing about what the essence is of
country music, the pickup trucks
and the hound dogs and the good
old boys and the six-packs of beer
fall away in favor of incredibly deep
things...the joy of birth, sorrow at
death, a broken heart, jealousy,
anger, rage, trying to get right with
God, look what my old lady did to
me, look what I did to my old lady.
All of those things are elemental
human emotions, and country
music is as good, if not better [at
expressing those emotions], than
any other form because it’s three
chords and the truth.”
Calling the genre “source material
for the soul,” Rosanne Cash, one of
the film’s talking heads and one of its
many subjects—as is, of course, her
dad, Johnny—believes the doc will
be revelatory to viewers in that coun-
try music is “part of the American
collective unconscious, whether
you realize it or not.”And for anyone in the “anything
but country” camp, Burns has a
conversion story to share. “I had
a guy come into a screening. He
goes, ‘Ken, I’ve loved everything
you’ve done, but country music...’
He shakes his head. I said, ‘Okay, just
give it a chance.’ By episode 8, he’s
sobbing. He continues to apologize.
He’s now steeped in country music.
And that’s what we’re finding.”
Vince Gill, a frequent presence
throughout the series, sums it up:
“The telling of this history, finally, by
[Ken], I think is going to completely
annihilate people in how wrong
they’ve been about their perception
of this music. I think we’re going
to finally get the respect that we’ve
never had from the people that
weren’t really steeped in it and don’t
understand the history.” Adds Burns:
“Vince, in our last episode, says,
‘All I’ve ever wanted out of music is
to be moved.’ That’s all I’ve ever
wanted out of filmmaking. The fact
that I’ve had the privilege of work-
ing...to make a film about music that
moves you, in a medium in which
emotions are at the heart—that’s it.”← Ken Burns