Common's skills are unique, and his style is complete, but his most effective talents are in constructing an album of material that listens like a book. One Day is a fully realized, start-to-finish memoir of a Chicago-based African American male, and it's equal to any challenge from the literary form. To listen to One Day is to pass through a multifaceted relationship between a father and a son, an expecting father and an impending son, and a man and his spirit, all set in the wake of a close friend's death. (This album is deep.) One Day features cameos from the cream of the hip-hop crop, including De La Soul, Lauryn Hill (the Fugees), Erykah Badu, and an indelible Canibus. Common can take his place as the responsible father of hip-hop and a dope MC as well. --Saren Sakurai