Common is not quite so common

Check out what Common is on CNN saying.

"I think hip-hop artists will have no choice but to talk about different things and more positive things, and try to bring a brighter side to that because, even before Barack, I think people had been tired of hearing the same thing,"

As I was listening to some older hip-hop as I am often want to do, I realized a line was “wanna run up in the white house and kick in the doooooor”. I thought to myself: “you can’t rap about that anymore, not in 2009 anyway.” It’s the same thing with that Nas song where Johnny Polygon is singing the hook (Props to Johnny P!), where they sample Tupac “we ain’t ready for a black president”. I remember listening to that Tupac song over at our old friend Jay’s house. And I remember how true it was at the time, this was two years after Rodney King and the L.A. riots, and one year after the deeply polarizing O.J. Simpson trial. Now O.J. is going to jail for theft (but really murder) and we DO have a black man as President.

My point is this: I think that a shift for hip hop is a large part of our new movement. I’ve been listening to hip hop since Snoop Dogg’s “Doggystyle”. (And I know, I know, I’m just some stupid white dude from the suburbs, but good music doesn’t have racial lines) I’ve been watching it change and people were saying that hip-hop died in 2000 with P.Diddy and shiny costumes. I still enjoyed it, but it did feel empty. People WERE tired of hearing the same old thing. It’s exciting to see where it goes. I imagine it will be more celebratory. Young people, and black people went overwhelmingly for Obama I mean, the same groups that have historically been disenfranchised and turned out in low numbers, this year though, for christs sake, we elected a President!

So it's time to celebrate! Yeah the economy is taking a dump on us and we got a lot of work to do but whatever, out of adversity comes opportunity.

BTW, that acapella thriller video is amazing!