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Verbose rapper Common spent the 90s flying in the face of fashion, his positivity and sophisticated, literate wordplay at odds with the then prevalent gangsta rap. Only belatedly in his career has he begun to achieve any commercial success.
Born Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr on 13 March 1972 in Chicago, Common's first foray into hip hop came as a teenager with the trio CDR, with whom he opened for NWA. But he got his big break when he won Source magazine's Unsigned Hype contest. Under the name Common Sense, he released his debut single, Take It EZ, in 1992, with the Can I Borrow A Dollar? album following on the Combat label. |
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In 1994, second album Resurrection followed on Ruthless Records and helped him to establish a strong fanbase in the Chicago area, while earning himself a reputation as one of the most eloquent - and wordy - MCs around. Resurrection contained the track I Used To Love HER, which attacked West Coast hip-hop for its misogynistic direction. It led to a short-lived feud with Ice Cube, finally settled by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. The feud raised Common Sense's profile, although it did result in a Los Angeles-based ska band of the same name hearing of him and threatening to sue for copyright infringement, forcing him to truncate his name to Common.
One Day It'll All Make Sense (1997) was his first release as Common and featured a string of A-list special guests, including Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and De La Soul. Common then embarked a period of profile-raising during which he returned the favour by guesting on records by Pete Rock and The Roots. All this activity paid off when he was given a deal by MCA.
His major-label debut was 2000's Like Water For Chocolate. Common’s biggest success to date, it was certified gold in the USA and spawned a Grammy nomination for the single The Light. However, the follow-up, Electric Circus, released in 2002, upset many long-term fans with its experimentation, with Common rapping over rock and electronica backings, although it did contain the Grammy-winning duet with Erykah Badu, Love Of My Life (An Ode To Hip Hop).
Sixth album Be (2005), produced by Kanye West, was a return to form and earned Common his second gold record. His seventh album, Finding Forever, again with West at the helm, came out at the end of July 2007.
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| Kanye West The College Dropout |
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Common Sense
Combat, 1992
Solid debut marred by puerile lyrics.
Common's debut found him pursuing a jazzy, laidback style, not dissimilar to Gang Starr. Unlike his later work, his lyrics find him in relatively light-hearted mood, many of them bordering on the throwaway, and Heidi Hoe whiffing of misogyny ("Kill you, hoe, cos your shit smells like mildew") and homophobia ("Homo's a no-no, so faggots stay solo"). But elsewhere strong material such as debut single Take It EZ makes this an interesting debut, albeit one that falls a long way short of future triumphs.
Download: Take It EZ
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Common Sense
Ruthless, 1994
A maturing Common finds his identity.
A more grown-up album than his debut, Resurrection found Common Sense beginning to find his intelligent, liberal voice. The album’s standout moment is I Used To Love HER, which lamented the direction hip-hop was taking after the huge success of gangsta rap, then at its zenith. Nuthin’ To Do, meanwhile, deals with inner-city decline in Chicago. The acclaim the album garnered – coupled with a high-profile spat with Ice Cube – brought him to the attention of a ska band of the same name, and this would be his last album as Common Sense.
Download: I Used To Love HER
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One Day It'll All Make Sense
Relativity, 1997
Guest star? Please join the queue.
Common’s first album as a father finds him with a new-found sense of responsibility that is most explicitly realised in his duet with Lauryn Hill, Retrospect For Life, dedicated to his daughter. With Common’s star very much in the ascendant, Hill wasn’t the only big-hitter keen to appear on his third album, with future partner Erykah Badu, Cee-Lo, Q-Tip and De La Soul also showing up. Producer No ID creates a more organic sound than on Common’s earlier work that suits the rich lyricism perfectly.
Download: Retrospect For Life
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Like Water For Chocolate
MCA, 2000
Common’s masterpiece, with added Afrocentricity.
Common’s first major-label album - and his first to achieve gold status – stands as his finest achievement. Building on the social consciousness of his previous two albums, Like Water For Chocolate is notable for its Afrocentric slant, particularly on Time Travelin’ (A Tribute To Fela) and Heat. Elsewhere, there are two strong singles in the Grammy-nominated The Light and The 6th Sense, plus the self-parodying A Film Called (Pimp), in which Common portrays himself as a hypocritical wife-beater.
Download: The Light
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Electric Circus
MCA, 2002
Eclectic, guest-heavy innovation.
After the success of Like Water For Chocolate, Common threw a curveball by taking hip-hop in all sorts of strange directions on Electric Circus. With The Neptunes on board on production duties and featuring an enormous array of guests – most bizarrely Stereolab’s Laetitia Sadier on New Wave and a member of metallers POD on Electric Wire Hustler Flower – Electric Circus also finds some of Common’s most soul-baring lyrics. Between Me, You And Liberation finds him confronting his own homophobia, as well as tackling sexual abuse and death, all in six minutes. It proved too ambitious for commercial success, although matters weren’t helped by Common’s record label being swallowed up four months after the album’s release.
Download: Come Close
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Be
Geffen, 2005
Back to basics for album number six.
With production duties handled by Kanye West and J Dilla, Be became Common’s biggest success to date, peaking at Number 2 on the Billboard chart. After the experimental sprawl of Electric Circus, Be presents a far more focused and coherent sound, with far fewer guests confusing proceedings (Kanye and John Legend do appear more than once, however) and a succinct running time of just 40 minutes. Some felt that he was playing it safe, but the quality of the songwriting silenced most doubters. Highlights include lead single The Corner and Chi-City.
Download: The Corner
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Finding Forever
Geffen, 2007
No great leap forward, but excellent none the less.
With Kanye West again taking the helm, Common’s seventh album finds him building on the success of Be, instead of changing course once again. The most notable special guest is Lily Allen on Drivin’ Me Wild, the tale of a fitness-obsessed woman who becomes a stripper with a supremely catchy chorus. Meanwhile, Kanye’s cousin Devo Springsteen helps out on Misunderstood, which appropriates Nina Simone’s jazz anthem to impressively ambitious effect. Elsewhere, lead single The People is another highlight.
Download: Misunderstood
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