Though Common still kicks tough, rap-conscious lines like "That jiggy shit is over/The war is on" (as he does on "Dooinit"), he characterizes them as warnings against the materialistic mentality that's afflicting black communities rather than disses against some other rapper. "It's the whole mentality that exists in the community, and it is influencing the community. That mentality is like, 'My car is more important than my mother,' 'My rocks are more important than my younger brother or this guy that's homeless on this street right now.'"
The war, then, is the struggle to get more positive voices, both musical and cultural, heard. "I think it is a war just for us, fighting for who we are as people, just fighting for our spirits. And it's a fight to get our opinions and beliefs out there. The war, musically, is the artists that do exist and try to bring a certain awareness and are conscious about what they're saying. We've got to combat the materialistic world, but it ain't just the artists. It's the whole world -- the radio stations, the publications, the TV stations -- that constantly want to pump music that don't possess that spirit of uplifting."
Constant elevation: Common's latest album balances spiritual elements with a good-timey, spitkicking vibe.
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9 p.m. Friday, November 24, $26.25
303-380-2333
Gothic Theatre, 3263 South Broadway, Englewood
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"Pops Raps III...All My Children," which features Common's dad, certainly does embody a message of spiritual elevation. At first Lynn was reluctant to participate in his son's music a third time. He recalls the phone conversation he had with his son, while Common was in a recording studio in Philadelphia, that initially led him to reconsider: "He was in the studio, him and Will Smith and them, and they were doing some work. I told Rashid, 'I'm not going back on the next album,' and he's kind of like, 'Will said you got to come back on the album. Will said your song was the best song on my last album,' and I'm like, 'Will Smith is listening to me?' I couldn't imagine this. So I made a proposition: I said, 'I'll come back on the album if I can write this time.' He was like, 'Yeah, you can write this time, Dad.'"
The song is a spoken-word tribute from a father "to all his children" who have the freedom of mind to blossom from a kind of musical family tree, where all the roots are intertwined: "True hip-hop is just like the underground railroad.../Everybody knows there's no fruits on the tree without the Roots and Black Star/Say we are who we are/The knowledge of self-determination." Lynn, who has counseled at-risk children at the Lookout Mountain School for Boys and has served as the Colorado Director of the Jim Brown founded Amer-I-Can Foundation, says he wanted "to put the world together, all the races together. I praise and compliment the young people that I think is doing and saying the right thing. I praise and compliment the people Rashid has chosen to work with. I was impressed with the wholesomeness of like De La and Lauryn. I could go on and on, but I wanted to praise them for the way they are raising their children. See, the thought that came to mind is that they got babies, too. I wanted these babies, which would be the age of my grandchildren, to be looking toward their own prophecy and not to buy someone else's negative prophecy, because you make your own prophecy."
This is one doctrine that Common is likely to accept.
