By Duane Watson

The mark of a great emcee is the ability to eloquently express emotions in rhyme. Common has always been a rapper without a fear of baring his soul, influencing change or acknowledging his imperfections.

In 1997, he released his third album, One Day It’ll All Make Sense.Addressing topics like fatherhood, enlightenment and family, it galvanized him as a “conscious rapper.” The album artwork is littered with photos from Common’s childhood, while the cover is a picture of his mother Dr. Mahalia Ann Hines and a young boy, almost a decade before he picked up a microphone.

Now, five albums and seven movies later, with the release of his memoir, One Day It’ll All Make Sense, Common is also an author. While his mother isn’t on the book cover, she’s very much included, writing the foreword and sprinkling her anecdotes and perspectives throughout. Common attributes his love for writing, particularly letters, to her. Each chapter begins with a letter to various individuals: His mother, father, daughter, Emmett Till, Erykah Badu and Kanye West among others.

It’s easy to question the necessity of a book from a 39-year-old man who has lived half of his life in the public eye. But Common does an excellent job of telling the story of Lonnie Rashid Lynn the man, more so than the entertainer. “I’ve written this book, so that I can show myself as a man in full,” he says. “That means telling some tough truths, revealing my faults and vulnerabilities. But it also means showing the true strength of my character.”

That character is forged in tales of the overwhelming shame of an eight-year-old boy giving up his bicycle to bullies, telling his mom he’s leaving university to pursue a rap career, or dealing with the loss due to illness of his close friend Jay Dee, who lived with Common until his death. He also recounts how his father kidnapped him and his mother at gunpoint, addresses his sometimes-questionable fashion sense and remembers his feud with Ice Cube during rap music’s east coast versus west coast war.

These stories make clear Common’s evolution from a young man growing up in Chicago’s South Side, drinking, fighting and chasing girls, into a grown man and father, seeking truth and finding love. In comparison, tales of sitting down with Assata Shakur in Cuba, performing with Maya Angelou, or meeting The Notorious B.I.G., Barack Obama, Tupac Shakur and Nelson Mandela seem inconsequential.

One Day It’ll All Make Sense is not only his memoir, but also a hip-hop memoir for anyone who grew up in its golden era. Common lets readers in to witness his struggle with differentiating good decisions from bad ones and his ability to learn from them, which is truly the mark of a great individual.

Related Articles:

• No Related Articles currently available...