This group seems concerned with not the just the state of the nation, but that of music and hip-hop in particular. Though the focus isn’t only on that segment of culture, the self assured stance and performance of the group sets Common Market apart from its contemporaries as well as Sabzi’s other group, Blue Scholars (at least on its earliest releases).

While there is a difference between Common Market and others right now, the group isn’t actually advancing the music it so obviously loves. Instead Common Market is contented with further defining a movement that began almost thirty years ago. And doing it in terms that were first observed almost twenty years back. But at what point can a genre based mostly upon post-modern appropriations push past its founding principals?

Rap-rock certainly wasn’t the answer. And even while hip hop culture has grown to include basically any and every race, creed and color (for evidence, track down a Juggalo) that hasn’t necessarily done too much to advance the music. Hopefully, whatever it is that listeners and fans are waiting for isn’t just an extension of Twista’s speed or some other relatively banal aspect of a performers work. Maybe, the internet rapper crowd, whose basically turned into a buncha digital cover boys despite talent and refinement, will eventually eschew what amounts to iconography and disappear into studios in order to only verbally greater we surfers. Probably not, though.

Either way, this Seattle duo functions cogently and is intelligent, interesting, talented and above all else, has good taste. Ra Scion ends up sounding like Talib Kweli (I’m not looking forward to that new disc, though) from either his Black Star or Reflection Eternal stints. And while that’s a bonus, there’s no shortage of that particular take on the music. Lyrically and musically, Common Market has done their work, giving the listener one of the few clever plays ever figred on sucka mcs in “Succor MCs.” It’s not a milestone, but still enjoyable.

The brief flashes of brilliances splayed out here and there should be a surprise to anyone who got an earful of the group’s follow up - Tobacco Road. But what this album does is prove that the “Daisy Age” concept and everything that runs in that style since still has legs. And as long as there are heads willing to sacrifice originality for solid performances, tenacity and sincerity it will work.