Nevertheless, "The Dreamer/The Believer" is a welcome return to soul from a rapper who has always relied on it, and Common's best album since "Be." Exception: "Sweet Dreams," which plays as a clumsy swipe at Drake, and an ill-advised attempt to sound hard. He's not quite as witty as he once was, the punchlines don't hit quite as hard and his genteel male chauvinism will continue to frustrate those who insist on seeing him as a beacon of enlightenment. To authenticate his return to earnestness, he's surrounded himself with the famously sincere: Maya Angelou, who appears on the first cut, his dad (a spoken word poet in his own right) on the last, producer No I.D., who designed many of Common's best tracks of the '90s, and the indefatigable Nas, who co-stars on the strong "Ghetto Dreams." Common's rapping has slowed down a bit since his glory days. That didn't work at all, so he's fled back to what he does best - thoughtful, somewhat pained ruminations about the state of society and hip-hop over beats inspired by '70s urban pop. For the 2008 release "Universal Mind Control," Chicago's favorite nice-guy rapper hired the Neptunes to update his sound and rebrand him as a randy party hound. Nobody likes to be hidebound, and Common is no exception.
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