Legacy is built upon authenticity, and Common is making sure every facet of his craft resonates with him. With a music career spanning almost three decades, he has learned that doing the opposite is a mistake not worth making.
The Emmy, Grammy and Oscar winner has a catalog of 14 solo projects and seven tracks that have landed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. His latest release is the collaborative effort with Hip Hop legend Pete Rock titled The Auditorium Vol. 1, released in July.
But a look back at the Chicago-bred emcee’s career in episode 14 of “Quest for Craft” with Questlove, sheds light on the moment Common found his career at a crossroads, challenged with remaining true to himself while trying to appease Relativity Records label executives who needed him to deliver a hit.
Then known as Common Sense, he released his debut album Can I Borrow A Dollar? in 1992, followed by Resurrection in 1994. The following year, he dropped Sense from his stage name and would go on to take a three-year break before delivering another body of work. As he recalled, during that time he crafted the song “Reminding Me (Of Sef)” featuring Chantay Savage that appeared on One Day It’ll Make Sense.
“I’d gotten somewhere but the label said, ‘Hey man, you not really selling no records. Like, you not selling like that,’” the multifaceted entertainer recalled about his success up until the point. “So I was in a battle with myself because I didn’t know really how to make a record that could reach the masses and do it with where I’m being true to myself. I just didn’t know,” he admitted.
The Just Wright actor further shared that, “Some people have that pop sensibility, and it’s in them innately, and they just can do it and it still be authentic to them. But I didn’t have that — I’m a little jazz.” Still, he put pen to paper and tried to deliver a song with widespread appeal without completely veering from the sound his fanbase had come to know.
“Anyway, you know them talking to me and asking me to do it. I did the best I could do, like tried to be as authentic as possible and sample the Chicago stepper song… It was authentic in what I was writing about, but the choice and the direction of the song and just the incubus of it, was not coming from an authentic place,” he told Questlove. “I always to this day, describe that song is the one that I had to like fight with, and it was like coming from a place that wasn’t where I normally create from.”
Catch the full episode of “Quest for Craft” with Common below.