Common’s sense
The Midwest rapper works
to expand his boundaries
beyond typical hip-hop fare
With 10 years in the hip-hop game under his belt, Common returns to Honolulu this weekend in support of an album unlike any of his previous efforts.
"Electric Circus," released late last year and praised as a courageous attempt at extending the boundaries of the genre, is a far cry from the bling-bling, bitches and bullet play that permeate much of what's heard on radio and in record stores today.
"I wanted to try to do something fresh -- to not repeat what I had done before," Common told Billboard shortly after his fifth album dropped in December 2002. "I wanted to expand upon what I had already done. I don't feel the pressures of success, but rather the pressure of trying to top creatively what I've already done.
Common
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"I also wanted to create something that would transport people to another place than what they're used to getting in hip-hop."
BORN INTO a middle-class family on Chicago's South Side, Common (real name Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr.) enjoyed a childhood unlike the majority of his peers in the rap industry. Although his parents divorced before he was two years old, Common's mother -- an elementary school principal -- soon got married to the owner of a plumbing business and continued to raise her son in a household full of love and focused on family values.
By the time he got to high school, Common had moved on from break-dancing to rapping and even opened for '80s icons Big Daddy Kane, N.W.A. and Too $hort with two friends in a group called CDR. But college was calling and, in 1989, he enrolled at Florida A&M University to study business administration.
Common's move to Florida didn't extinguish his passion for rhyming, however, and just two years later he was back in a Chicago studio recording his debut album, "Can I Borrow a Dollar." The sound of that record is a far cry from the music Common produces today; in an interview with Vibe earlier this year, he explains that it "lacked depth 'cause I hadn't really gone through anything."
"I wanted the brother in the Chevy with the peeling, tinted windows bumpin' my music," he said. "He was about 19, a raw cat, but very intelligent. His eyes were red from weed and the struggle."
With 1994's "Resurrection" and 1997's "One Day It'll All Make Sense," Common kept it coming with a pair of albums that allowed the MC to keep expressing himself and enjoying the fruits of his labor in the Midwest hip-hop scene. He even managed to get involved with the cross-country beef that embroiled the industry, but instead of catching a bullet like Tupac Shakur or The Notorious B.I.G., Common sat down with Louis Farrakhan and managed to settle the differences he had with Ice Cube and avoid unnecessary violence.
Common
AT ABOUT that time, Common began to realize he was simply getting tired of the same old same old that fellow artists were putting out for their fans.
"Hip-hop is bigger than just doing a sample and some cuts, even though that s-- is dope," he's quoted as saying in the December 2002 issue of Pulse! "I always loved the art of hip-hop, when people would do different things and bring something new to the table.
"It wasn't about just repeating the same thing you'd done before or what anybody else had done before. It was about being fresh."
Common's Grammy Award-nominated 2000 release, "Like Water for Chocolate," was just that -- fresh.
"Being in Chicago had set the foundation for me, but I needed to get away from what people knew and expected of me," he said. "You go from trying to impress your homies (with the first three albums), to sitting with your homies and your children playing together."
"Like Water for Chocolate" shows a decidedly different side of the artist formerly known as Common Sense, before a ska band with the same name successfully forced him to change to a one-word moniker. It was this album that gave Common his biggest hit yet, "The Light," a love song that helps underscore his dedication to family responsibility and growing maturity as an artist.
"That's one of (life's) steps, finding who you are," he said. "It's going to be a gradual process. Once you know the path you want to be on, you can weed through the stuff you don't want to be and get the stuff out of your life that you don't want in it."
COMMON CONTINUES down his chosen path these days as a father to his daughter and in his relationship with fellow recording artist Erykah Badu. He doesn't drink alcohol, smoke weed or even eat meat anymore, and he understands there's even more to hip-hop than the soulful beats and guest appearances that made "Like Water for Chocolate" different from his previous releases.
"Sometimes I definitely think ... am I going to lose certain fans?" when deciding to make records like "Electric Circus," Common explained to Elemental Magazine. With rock influences like Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell evident throughout the album, he's understanding that some fans might not appreciate the direction he's going in with his music.
"But I always know that the key is, if you're at a place you gotta show people that place, and some people may not want to experience it."
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