The Auditorium Vol 1 vinyl

Loma Vista proudly present the latest full-length album by Common, one of the so-called 'conscious' hip-hop scene's earliest progenitor. Here, the rapper teams up with fellow wordsmith and DJ Pete Rock - whom the former refers to as "one of The Greatest Creators Hip Hop and Music has ever seen" (capitalisations not going unnoticed) - for a 15-track meditation on the proverbial theatre: the setting in which the fantastical drama of hip-hop takes place. Never having worked together before, Common and Rock roll out an uncommon compendium, fulfilling in particular Common's dream of working with an antecedent great. Mid-album scratch-fests like 'All Kind Of Ideas' evoke golden-days hip-hop nostalgia through their easy, boppy grooves and images of hustling and "cooking up", while 'Wise Up' and 'Dreamin'' move more textural and vinyl-crackly with things, musing equally on the requisites of leg-breaking performance. A glisteningly soulful album, invoking the glabrous power of street dreams.