Released: 2007
So Hip Hop grew up, like all things eventually do. After spending two decades pillaging it’s beats and voices from vintage soul, jazz and funk, the circle had been fully turned. Okay maybe it hadn’t for everyone, but in the corner of the supposedly more enligthened was Lonnie Rashid Lynn, better known to the world now as Common, a rapper who’d first come to prominence as part of the Soulquarians along the likes of D’Angelo, Talib Qweli and sometime girlfriend Erykah Badu.
Also part of that clan was producer supreme J Dilla, whose contribution to his friend’s breakout album Like Water For Chocolate helped enhance both their mutual reputations. Later on 2005’s Be that seat was taken by Kanye West, with Dilla ailing due to complication from a rare blood disease which took his life in early 2006. By 2007’s Finding Forever West was emulating the distinct broken beat set ups which had posthumously made the arch innovator one of the most emulated producers of the decade.
By now there were no rules when it came to sampling and on The People West was free to borrow from funk legend Gil Scott-Heron and hirsute rockers Mountain, as his customer wondered mischievously “Why white folk focus on dogs and yoga?/While people on the low end tryna ball and get over.” Was this hip-hop? Was this soul? Was this funk? Who knew, or cared, because the circle was now closed, and it was all the same again.
The Voice Of Unreason 
I didn’t realize that common link with the Soulquarians – I like a lot of those artists but had no idea they worked together.
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