Artist: Common
Interviewer: Alex Fruchter

Since his first release, Can I Borrow A Dollar?, Common has been regarded as one of the most skillful Hip Hop artists. His second album Resurrection was classified as a Hip Hop classic and brought the world ‘I Used To Love H.E.R.,’ one of the most well known commentaries on Hip Hop culture and music. Common has continually explored all aspects of life through his recordings. He has refused to tailor his artistic expressions based on billboard charts and Soundscan numbers. Those efforts have paid off, and have allowed Common to sustain a long and successful music career. He has had beef with Ice Cube, and even gave up eating beef altogether. His ability to exist all over the Hip Hop spectrum has allowed fans from various backgrounds to find something to connect with. It has also allowed him to take his message from the Southside of Chicago and spread it around the globe.

His newest album, BE, which is set to hit stores in May, is already being compared to Resurrection. After guest appearances on tracks with Kanye West and Jadakiss, Common’s album has become one of the most anticipated of 2005. Soundslam recently caught up with Common to shed some light on the new album, talk about Chicago, as well as how to use Hip Hop as a tool of self-empowerment. Check it out.



Soundslam: I’ve been seeing a lot of press releases and just different write-ups of the new album, and they’re calling it a return to the form you displayed on ‘Resurrection’….How do you feel about that statement?

Common: I feel great about that because people eventually went and said that ‘Resurrection’ was a classic. So, if they’re saying it’s a return to ‘Resurrection,’ then that means they’re referring to this album in a high regard, on the classic level. I feel good about that. I mean, it’s still got something new to it. But that’s what I had to understand as an artist too. You could do stuff that may even sound like something you did before, but because you’re at a new place in your life it’s still going to be new.

Soundslam: Did you feel any pressure going into the album? Did you feel you had to show everyone your skills again?

Common: Yeah. I felt hungry more or less. I felt hungry to the point like, ‘Man. I’m about to just come with it and just come with something that means something. It’s going to be some classic music, and it can be timeless. That’s what I felt more than anything. The pressure is just the pressure to survive in the music industry. That’s some of the pressure because it’s the way that you live. That’s more than anything the pressure. I always feel confident that I could create some music that’ll be good. It’s like, you know, some days are OK. But overall I be feeling like the OK song I try not to let people hear. I just try to let those moments of good music come out there. And those best moments shine on the album. I felt confident, but I did feel like, you know, I wanted to let people know that I was one of those artists that will be here.

Soundslam: So let’s get into the new album. I don’t think that much is known yet. I was looking at the track-listing and it seems like you got songs covering love, spirituality, other basic survival needs. All these things that go into the aspects of making up a human being, and the album title is ‘BE.’ Is that something that’s intentional…

Common: The ‘BE’ just symbolized being you, being natural, not trying hard to do anything. That’s the way I approached this album. That’s the way it was created. We didn’t try hard to make music. We dealt with whatever felt good. I did want to show the balance of being a human. You could be, as an artist, you can be human. You ain’t gotta necessarily be the Superhero for people to connect with you. It is ordinary people in the world that like, they go through love, they go through anger. They got fantasies. They might got friends that might sell dope, but they might not have sold dope. Whatever it may be, you could relate to all that. That’s what I really try to express on this album, the balance of being a human being.

Soundslam: I agree. Some of what you just said made me think about our society is so focused on celebrity, celebrity, celebrity, and a lot of people are trying to be somebody not realizing that they already are in their own right.

Common: That’s what it is. You ain’t gotta try to be something. You just be who you are. You could grow through that. Grow on that. Expound on that. You could get bigger that way, from the core of who you are. You grew up, I grew up middle class. I’ve been around the ghetto. I’ve been around preppy cats. I ain’t trying to be nothing I ain’t. I always felt like throughout my career I expressed who I was at that time. ‘Not because the industry wanted this, or the world said you should be this.’ It was like, ‘this is what I feel I am right now.’ This is what I’m going to give you.

Soundslam:…Going in a bit more, you have a song called ‘Chi City.’ I’m wondering how much of the environment of Chicago has influenced your sound?

Common: It’s been a big thing on shaping who I am as a person and as an artist because that’s been the foundation. Chicago is a soulful place. It’s real blue collar. It’s real black. So, I mean a lot of my stuff comes from those stories and me connecting with different people. Like I said, even growing up in the middle class you experience the ghetto in Chicago. You experience being around dope sellers, and sometimes your friend’s might have been through these things. And then at the same token you experience Jack and Jill parties and whatever it is. You know, the black upper-middle class. Chicago has been a big part of who I am. And me not growing up so much around the industry allowed me to come with that authentic everyday people music. If you notice even what Kanye did, [that] to me is something that’s more balanced than what you might get from your average Hip Hop artist.

Soundslam: On one of your albums, I’m trying to remember which it was, did you have the tracks split up where half the tracks were East Side Stony, and the other tracks had the sub heading, West Side Stony?

Common: Yeah.

Soundslam: I’m calling you now just east of Stony on 54th and Hyde Park Blvd…Could you just tell what the significance of that was to you for people that have no idea of Chicago at all?

Common: It was just me splitting up the sides of Stony Island, which meant a lot to me. Stony Island was one of the biggest streets on the Southside of Chicago that everybody knows. I just wanted the label to be a little clever as far as labeling it the sides of the album. I did write that album, I was living right around where you’re at. I was living on 53rd and Cornell. So, that was more or less a clever way of saying an A side and a B side. Stony Island is that street that’s known on the Southside. I grew up like four blocks away from Stony.

Soundslam: You brought in the Last Poets on ‘Corners.’ When you were doing that did part of your thinking ever go, man if I get Last Poets on this track a lot of people that may have never heard of Last Poets are going to get turned on to them?

Common: Yeah. My first thinking was like man, ‘they’re going to say something so powerful and so good.’ It was just an honor to have them on there. Then I realized after we made the song that that song could be a big song. It could be on the radio, video play. I really got a wind of that when I heard it on the radio. One time I was in Chicago and they played it like three times back to back when we was out there. It was like, ‘man. shorties are getting to hear the Last Poets.’ People who never heard of the Last Poets are getting to hear them. I felt that affect when I heard it on the radio.

Soundslam: What do you see as the significance of Hip Hop artists from today linking themselves with artists like the Last Poets?

Common: It just keeps the traditions of Hip Hop alive and the elders, you know. You always want to know where certain things came from. That way you can be more true to what it is. Me having those cats on there, it’s like paying homage and exposing people that’s into Hip Hop and into our culture who was before us. It’s good to have that because you do know and understand more where you come from. It will remind you. Little kids are gonna feel the affects of that in their soul.

Soundslam: On that song you have a line, ‘kids shoot the wrong way cause they ain’t knowing their goals.’ And that’s a pretty powerful line. And other lines…. ‘We write songs about wrongs cause it’s hard to see right.’ Do you think Hip Hop could be a way to show kids how to know your goal, how to shoot the right way?

Common: Oh yeah definitely. Hip Hop is the leader amongst a lot of the youth. It’s a leader. It’s the leading form of information, interaction, everything. If we say something that means something it could definitely lead the shorties in the right way, and lead them towards their goals. If they see you in interviews saying something that means something, then that can help. It could definitely be a help. It’s not the only source to change the world, but it’s definitely a powerful source and powerful voice. And it’s having a powerful effect on the world. So, yeah, it definitely can be one of the catalysts for that.

Soundslam: I teach 2nd grade in Englewood right now and I brought in teaching them a Hip Hop unit and we just finished studying the American Revolution. I started drawing a bit of comparisons between Hip Hop and that in terms that Hip Hop can be used as way towards self-empowerment, self-confidence. Do you think I’m way off with that or do you think that can be taught?

Common: Hip Hop is about that. If you look at the core of Hip Hop, Hip Hop took the streets, took people, we didn’t have nothing and turned it into something. It empowers. Self-empowerment by, first of all when you speak out on things that is self-empowering itself. When you take control of things that have an effect upon your life, meaning if you go out and push your own record and go out and say, ‘yeah. This is I want.’ And you create some of your own videos and just be a part of your own work and the future of your own work that’s self-empowering itself. What a lot of artists are doing with their clothing companies to their record labels to other business enterprises, man, that’s self-empowering. It’s self-empowerment too just to grab onto life and learning about yourself. Spreading certain issues, spreading certain philosophies and words and things, and thoughts about life, it gives self-empowerment too. Just expression is self-empowerment.

Soundslam: We were talking about just being creative and using language in your own way.

Common: That’s you. You get to free things up and just be you and say who you are.

Soundslam: You also have a song on the new album called ‘Love Is….’ Is that examining love in a traditional sense how we may think about it? Or is it talking to Hip Hop again?

Common: Naw. It’s me talking about love, not so much in the traditional way, because when you think about love you think about a man and just woman. I’m talking about love from different perspectives. From the love of money to just loving yourself and going within for love first, to being able to love and teach your daughter. A man teaching his daughter how to love so she can love in relationships later. And the love we be having for our homies when we lose’em. All types of expressions of love and I talked about it in a non-traditional way.

Soundslam: It’s been over ten years now since ‘Resurrection’ and ‘I Used to Love H.E.R.’ How do your feelings now compare to your feelings back then towards Hip Hop?

Common: I think ‘I Used to Love H.E.R.’ can be relative to right now. They could play ‘I Used to Love H.E.R.’ it still could be relative.

Soundslam: That’s your feelings again.

Common: Yeah. I really love Hip Hop though. That song still could fit with certain things that’s going on right now. But I love Hip Hop. I love being a part of this. And also, as much as I express that song, it can fit a lot of things, I also understand people go through changes just like Hip Hop will go through its changes. I ain’t going to like everything that she does but it ain’t for just me. Hip Hop is for a lot of different people and it ain’t always going to be perfect. It’s like a person.

Soundslam: Talking about that. I read a quote from you from a little ways back and you said, ‘What makes Hip Hop so segregated that you can’t listen to Jay-Z and listen to Blackstar?’ And recently now you kind of see an artist as yourself on the remix with Jadakiss that people might not have expected a few years ago. Do you think that situation has gotten any better?

Common: Yeah. It’s definitely looking brighter. I think actually Kanye was really bright spot to bring more of the Hip Hop community together. Because he had the conscious or real artistic side of Hip Hop loving him and the Jay-Z crowd, the more street crowd loving him. And that’s what Hip Hop was really always about. No matter what people loved Rakim. No matter what people loved NWA. No matter what walk of life you was from A Tribe Called Quest was universal. I think that’s what Hip Hop is starting to get that more again where you can like Jay-Z and you can like Common Sense. You can like 50 Cent and you like Kanye. We need that balance because everybody’s not the same. We not all gangstas and we not all conscious. Everybody got some of them elements to us. Yeah.