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![Modern Renaissance man Common has won two Grammy awards, starred in several box office favorites, released eight studio albums, and still shows no sign of letting down. His latest album, Universal Mind Control, offers yet another side of Common’s sound, mixing classic hip-hop with a little bit more than subtle electronica feel. After his show at Lupo’s in Providence, RI with College-loving partyboy Asher Roth, he spoke with ArsenalofSound.com about his writing style, the hip-hop genre, and his beloved White Sox.
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AoS: You tend to have a brief waiting time between album releases, and with your next record expecting to drop this year that’ll make one per year for the past three. Do you have a continuous mental flow of what you want to say in your lyrics or is there ever a downtime where you have to think about what you want to touch upon?
COMMON: There are definitely times when I have to stop and think about what I want to discuss and times when I really got to get back into writing mode. Between [2007’s] Finding Forever and [last year’s] Universal Mind Control it’s been kind of a continuous thing because I had been writing and doing films so it really kind of kept the juices flowing, the creative juices, but since I wrote Universal Mind Control and released it I’ve been focusing on different film things so I hadn’t been writing. I had just wrote my first rap I had written in about 5 months for Malik Yusef, this poet from Chicago, who Kanye [West] and I had just done a song with him called “Magic Man”.
AoS: What are your feelings on the current state of hip-hop?
COMMON: I think as a whole genre it has some really positive things about it. It’s constantly evolving. I think as much as at does go through stagnant periods. It’s still a powerful force. It’s become bigger than music, you know? It’s bigger than just the music, it has had a cultural influence, and it’s in politics now. Obviously the way we dress is funneling into a lot of other aspects of pop culture. Which is good, it’s positive because people are getting to see what this generation is about. Along with that there are still some aspects of the art that I think could be improved, but that’s life. Everywhere you look, we all could be improved.](Common%20Interview_files/shapeimage_3.jpg)
