Wherein the corniest dude in rap grabs boom-bap courtesy of Primo and drops a five-star obvious banger. Headz are exploding coast to coast on this, including the usually chill WJCU Tuesday night DJ who, before premiering the track, started yelling out specific friends' names, all, "You gotta listen to this! Hey, Mikey! Turn the effing radio up, man!" I responded by bumping the ensuing ish in my station wagon. What's all the fracas? This is Common spitting hard, a sort of anti-Gap ad, and the reason "The Game" works and "The Corner" didn't two years ago is all in the production. Kanye makes "lush" beats better than anyone, but when he switches his chipmunks to "hard" the denser drums appear false, the minor key piano plods just inherently uninspired. "The Corner" sounded like a façade sandwiched in sanguine Be (2005); dorm room fingerbangers like "Go" found Common on steadier, more natural footing. (Besides, the Clipse perverted "The Corner" with such glib glee on We Got It 4 Cheap, Vol. 2 that, on relisten, Common's verses seem more mixtape-mismatched to the beat.)

On the other hand, this breed of infinitesimally looped and bouncing shit talk are the sweet, airy bread and butter of DJ Premier. And so, while Common's still namedropping Akeelah and the Bee and warning about global warming, he's having more fun running up against these snare cracks, he's more at home here than trying to coldcock it out on the "tha" corner. He sounds as hard as he's trying to be, in other words. This is no career high for either artist involved -- Primo's last year has included works of blinding genius, and "The Game" is just fun -- but the track is every bit as good as they both intend it to be. Which, while not quite as head-exploding as some people might want, is still some impressive shit from two old motherfuckers.

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