By Ericka Blount Danois | Photography By Cliff Watts
Common, dressed in a classic streamlined Caruso black tuxedo, is looking over his shoulder at Selita Ebanks, sporting a La Perla black bra and panties, as she sensually rests her body against his back for the cameras. The Chitown rapper is at the top of his game yet again. His 10th album dropped in July and he just wrapped a challenging role as civil rights activist James Bevel for Selma, the Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic directed by Ava DuVernay and produced by Oprah Winfrey and Brad Pitt due out by Christmas. With an already full plate, he will also continue his starring role on the AMC series, Hell on Wheels, as Elam Ferguson, an emancipated slave.
Ebanks reaches over toward the nightstand and feeds Common caviar off of her long crimson fingernails as they lounge seductively on an oval bed in the 57th floor penthouse suite of the W Hotel Times Square. Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo croon in the background of the racy scene. Throughout the day there are many changes for Common: one luxurious suit after another—all attire befitting a leading man or maybe a hip-hop sex symbol. It’s the sex symbol part that Common approaches reluctantly. “It’s not what I reach for, but I like women, so I’m not running away from it,” he smirks. “But I’m not running out saying, ‘Hey let me get my eyebrows arched’ or whatever sex symbols do.”
The current scene is definitely sexy, but potentially awkward. See, Ebanks and Common’s real-life ex-girlfriend, Serena Williams, are best friends. And according to him, there was a time he thought Serena was the one. However, he just laughs off today’s provocative posing with his ex’s supermodel bestie. It’s acting, just like any role.
Common is easygoing and down-to-earth—qualities that have sometimes earned him the unfavorable label of “soft.” Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
There’s a war going on in Chicago. Over the July 4th holiday, 82 people were shot, 14 fatally. As the murders continue to increase, so does the silence surrounding the crisis. Common, a Southside native, bucks silence. He has been a loyal activist for Chicago’s youth through his Common Ground Foundation, which seeks to use creative arts to expose young people to new opportunities (Common Ground and Kanye West’s Donda’s House have together found jobs for 20,000 young people in Chicago).
The rapper’s latest album, Nobody’s Smiling, is as much a nod to the lyrics of Rakim’s legendary track, “In the Ghetto,” as it is a wake-up call to anyone who is listening to what he deems as the cries of Chicago youth for help.
“One way of giving back is by having young Chicago artists on the album,” says Common, who has Cocaine 80s, Malik Yusef, and Dreezy as guests. “This album is an action to increase awareness to people in the city. I owe it to Chicago.”
Common is no stranger to violence or death. His 6-foot-8 father, Lonnie Lynn, (Common was born Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr.) was a basketball playground legend who suffered from an addiction to drugs and the fast life. He once kidnapped Common, then a toddler, and his mother at gunpoint, taking them to a tryout with the Seattle SuperSonics to prove to recruiters that he was a family man, even though Common’s parents were separated and getting a divorce at the time.
Some of Common’s friends have been killed in senseless shootings, and he knows the uncle of Hadiya Pendleton, the honor student slain by gang members, who performed at the President Obama’s inauguration just days before her death.
As a teenager, Common had a competitive and roguish streak and would instigate fights on the basketball court near Hyde Park. One session, his friend, Ron Coward, remembered, lasted all night. Their team would win and they would fight the opposing team and play again. Their team would lose and they would fight the opposing team and play again. This went on until the sun came up.
But overall, Common tended to be the voice of reason. “Ras was always pushing us to do better,” says his life-long neighborhood friend, who grew up near 88th and Dorchester. “We would be out there gangbanging and he introduced us to positive stuff like rapping and playing sports.”
In one of his first interviews on BET in 1989, host Madelyne Woods said to him, “You’re not really hardcore.” He responded, “I’m hardcore which to me is coming from the heart. Putting your heart on that paper and being true.”
That heart has been breaking a lot lately. In 2006, he lost one of his closest friends, producer and hip-hop genius, J. Dilla, to Lupus and the rare blood disease thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) three days after his 32nd birthday. When Common found out he was sick, he invited Dilla out to Los Angeles to stay in an apartment with him because he thought L.A.’s sunshine and beaches would be a healing environment. “He was physically deteriorating. It would be sad for me to see. You know you coming home healthy,” remembers Common. “You feel guilty. It brought my own immortality to the forefront.”
The Detroit rapper and producer was in a wheelchair toward the end of his life and sometimes Common would come home from a tour and find Dilla on the couch with his head in his mother’s lap.
On the single, “Rewind That” on Nobody’s Smiling, Common is finally able to talk about J. Dilla since his death. His childhood friend and producer, Ernest Dion Wilson, better known in the industry as No I.D., re-connected with Common to produce the album and he convinced the typically private rapper to address the death of his friend.
“Until I did this song, I wouldn’t answer questions in interviews about him. I wouldn’t keep pictures around. That song has been part of my process in dealing with it still.”
Before an injury sidelined him, Common wanted to be a professional basketball player. His father got him a job as a ball boy for the Chicago Bulls and he got the chance to know Michael Jordan just when he was starting out with the Bulls. “You know how popular I was?!” He smiles thinking about how the kids at his school reacted. By the time Common had heard the story about the kidnapping by his father, the two of them had already built a solid relationship. “He was always honest, acknowledging his flaws. He didn’t try to hide anything,” Common says. His father also introduced him to music. On each trip to visit with his father he would borrow an album from him.
But his mother, Dr. Mahalia Ann Hines, has always been his rock and spiritual foundation. She wrote passages of her recollections of her son for his memoir, One Day It’ll All Make Sense. Common’s 16-year-old daughter, Omoye, helps him stay relevant musically. She and her friends had a listening session for his latest album, and critiqued and approved it.
“The most beautiful thing about this project is it’s not ahead of its time, it’s not a throwback album. It feels like today,” he says. “I feel like a new artist. There are people out there that don’t know my music, but they know me from acting. Some don’t know me at all.”
No I.D. has been friends with Common since Common skipped from the second to the fourth grade and ended up in the same class with him. Though they grew apart when Common moved to New York to build his career, they reunited and Nobody’s Smiling is produced entirely by the producer, who is the executive vice president of Def Jam Recordings and has his own label, ARTium Records. “This album is an example of letting people know where we come from,” says No I.D. “We can say to kids, ‘You can do it, because we did it.’”
A third friend that used to hang out with No I.D. and Common in the fourth grade, Twilite Tone, performs live with Common, deejays and does background vocals. Common is single now, and enjoying his unattached life, but says he believes in marriage. He thought it would happen with Williams, but he is taking his time now before he jumps into something else. “If I’m in it as much as I was with Serena, as much as I loved her…it takes time to heal and find that peace to be able to move on.”
Common has worked with the best in both the music and film industry and has met many fans along the way from countries around the world. But there was one particular fan that had his heart beating out of his chest when he performed for him and his wife. The second time he met President Obama was in 2007, when he was a potential presidential candidate and Common’s album, Finding Forever was coming out. Then-Senator Obama rushed over to him and said, “Man, I heard the album is coming out. I’m going to have to scoop it.”
Whether it’s world leaders doting on him or young people in need, Common is grateful for his position and the chance to complete his 10th album with the same friend he began with. “It’s full circle for me and No I.D. [The album] is on his label. It’s validation. We are doing this for a purpose and a reason.”
Location: The EWOW Penthouse Suite at The W Times Square | Make-up: Starina Catchatoorian (Common) | Tiffany Garlick (Selita) | Grooming: Gaston “Junior” Nunes | Hair: Yale’ wa Sabree-Melvin | Manicurist: Maisie Dunbar | Assistant: Brandon Washington