even was rockin' the bootleg for a while before the CD came out. Between that and Kanye's LAST REGISTRATION (which was a much better album), I was cool that summer.

I don't go back to it often (I tend to do this with albums I played the shit out of on release), but I liked it better than EC as far as a complete album is concerned. The music fit Common better as a whole and even his "softer" side songs sounded more suited to his style than something like "I Got A Right Ta" or what have you. I will say, however, Common had started to lean on "Common" cliches in his rhymes (the token "shock verse" i.e. "black men, with white girls on their arms... I be mad at them, as if I know they moms") for the first time.

Not quite "Gap" Common, but you can see the building blocks were being stacked.

and Kanye did a fine job on production as far as I'm concerned. I like a good 85% of what he put out here more than the stuff on College Dropout.