I Have a Dream [ft. will.i.am]

I think we should all agree that 2006 was the year Will.i.am at least began to atone for the sins of Black Eyed Peas. Between Too Short's "Keep Bouncin'", Game's "Compton", and Nas' "Hip Hop Is Dead", Mr. am's been steadily proving himself as an able, if not exceptional, hip-hop producer. One thing, though, BEP's pre-Fergalicious albums had some jams, and even Monkey Business had a pretty decent song with Cee-Lo and Q-tip. Maybe I've said too much, but maybe Will doesn't deserve all the bad press he gets. Even if he does, he knows how to chop a drum break, and "I Have a Dream" is no exception.

Will.i.am's trick is to take his favorite song from a particular artist and "pop" it a little bit. For Common, he seems to favor Like Water For Chocolate because "Dream" is a variation of that album's mid-tempo Soulquarian funk, only cleaner and more radio-ready. This is "Peace, Love & Gap" Common, so it needn't get too gully anyway. Plus, the song is for this year's version of the white-teacher-saves-brown-students flick, Freedom Writers, so let's keep it in perspective. It's definitely better than "Gangsta's Paradise". Com has some nice lines in the first verse about being "born on a blacklist" and having "struggle as my address ", and the second verse surprisingly pertains to the plot of the movie. But there's something about Will.i.am dicing MLK's speech into a tidy sample that feels extremely creepy. Maybe I'm a sucker for context, or maybe I just don't like the idea of Coca-Cola Common and Will.i.am-a-Pepper scooching King over in his casket for a press photo.