Common has unshakable faith in rap as inspiration: as a party-starter, a spirit-raiser, a consciousness-transformer. A great hip-hop record can be all those things, especially when the beats are right, and No I.D., who produced all of Common’s ninth album, grounds the songs with a steady bass and drums rumble, adding dashes of color like the Kenny Loggins sample in "Celebrate." But Common can be too, well, common: a nice guy, whose boasts and bromides are too predictable to really inspire.

Listen To "Celebrate":

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“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."