In the three decades since he made his debut, we've seen Lonnie Rashid Lynn go from wisecracking 20-year old Windy City emcee to 50-year old Oscar-winning multi-hyphenate. Beyond any job description, however, is the growth that the man has embraced while in the public eye. Common today is much more famous than he was back in 1992, and Hip-Hop fans and peers got to see his rise in real time. That means we got to witness the growth that came with that rise. In looking across the landscape of his journey, in recent years, Common seems to be proud of where he's come from. Not just his geographical hometown, but the evolution that sparked both from it and from expanding outside of it.
He's done great work with a number of superstar producers, but his most significant musical relationship has arguably been with the legendary No I.D. From the sample-heavy boom bap of ...Dollar?, the two Chicagoans put on for their city, as Common would become one of rap's most venerated rhymers and No I.D. became a superproducer of the highest order.
There are things Common has infamously rapped about that he rejects now as personal philosophy. On 2005’s ‘Real People’, he dismissed interracial relationships (“Black men walking wit white girls on they arms/ I be mad at em--as if I know they moms.”); and criticized the idea of gay rappers on 2000s "Nag Champa (Afrodisiac For The World)": "It's rumors of gay emcees, just don't come around me with it/You still rockin' hickies, don't let me find out he did it."
“Where I grew up it’s very segregated and being a figure in the Black community you do have a lot of responsibility," he said in a 2019 interview with NME. "You can only speak from what you’ve experienced and knowing what your community holds you to. But at a certain point, you also start to see the world and experience new things and you see that the world is bigger than just the segregated parts of Chicago."
“Some of the things I thought I had to be as a Black person, or had to be as a man, I later recognized I needed to unlearn some of that stuff.”
He's now an Oscar and Grammy Award-winning icon. In many ways, Common's career is parallel to Hip-Hop's journey over the past 30 years. From the hardscrabble underdog of the early 1990s, to the maturing craftsman post Y2K; from the crossover superstar that took Hollywood, to the revered elder statesman that crosses all demographic bounds. Common Sense has continued to grow, as a man and as an artist. His two-part Beautiful Revolution series is the latest example of the creative he's become. Hip-Hop is no longer simply a young man's game, and it doesn't need to be. We should all be so fortunate as to continue doing what we love into our fifties.