Common

Some people say pro-Black rap, some people say knowledge rap, because it wasn't just all pro-Black, but there was a consciousness to it.

Now people say conscious rap, and Common might be the poster boy for that.

But at the time, it wasn't no segment of rap.

This is what rap was.

He's more conscious, right? And because he's rich now, remember that line he said, truthfully, I want to rhyme like common sense.

Yeah.

But the rest of that verse, I don't remember, but it basically says, It ain't no money in rhyming like Common Sense, but now he is.

If you remember that last album, that shit was trash because he turned into Common.

Yeah, because he turned into Common.

You know what I'm saying? And if you were a Jay fan, that's not what you became a fan of.

You became a fan of him because he was the ultimate hustler.

You know, Talib Kweli never went platinum.

If the inspiration speaks to that, I don't rule out the possibility, never.

how are you determining who to share these beats with? Because obviously Lil Wayne's on here, Big Sean's on here, John Batiste is on here, Common's on here.

I mean, it's not just anybody.

I think a lot of that has to do with just the enthusiasm that is expressed by those artists when I speak to them and the word of mouth is spreading that diligence to what's happening.

You know what I'm saying? I never seen him commercially release anything from Dilla.

I felt like it would be an amazing thing for me to include him with the project and be a conduit to a lot of the newer artists that are on the project that will never get the chance to meet Dilla or probably would have never gotten an opportunity to work with Dilla or even work on something that he created because they don't have access to it.

So to have a big Sean and the incredible John Baptiste and Common and un-fucking-believable brilliance of D'Angelo and Anderson .Paak and, you know what I'm saying? Crazy.

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, three days prior to the release date, they added some incredible keys and they contributed to the production and co-produced the D'Angelo joint with Dilla, this woman.

And they were doing like Black Lily, these open mic nights with all these different artists coming through.

Like Black Thought would be freestyle and Common would come through.

You'd see the artists they were recording with like D'Angelo and Erykah Badu and Jill and and Bilal and all these different artists come through and I'm there while all this is happening.

So it was just an inspiring time to be a young artist.

Yeah, it's crazy.

It's like.

Miseducation, Black Album, College Dropout, Commons B, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Alicia Keys.

It's kind of crazy.