“My friends embraced me for being unique.” Talking music and manhood with the legendary Common

“Peace, peace,” rapper turned actor Common greets me as his face comes into view on our webcall.

“Salaam, salaam,” I reply, and his face breaks into a warm, easy smile. Smoke is floating across his camera, and for a moment I wonder if he’s having a celebratory cigar. Common has many reasons to rejoice: he’s enjoyed a musical career that has seen many evolutions since his first album, Can I Borrow a Dollar? came out in 1992. He went on to be a vital part of the movement dubbed The Soulquarians by A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip, which included Mos Def, Talib Kweli, D’Angelo and Common’s former partner, Erykah Badu in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

Recognition of his place in Black American music led to invitations to perform at Barack Obama’s White House in 2011 and again in 2016. The two of them represent Chicago not just in the US but to the world. With an Emmy, three Grammys and an Oscar, he’s just a Tony short of the hallowed EGOT status, but his continued development as an actor in Hollywood means that could well be in reach. In the meantime, he’s also got a Golden Globe in his awards cabinet.

“I’m lighting some Palo Santo,” he informs me as if reading my mind. I should have known. Common’s style of rap is less about cigars and status, and more about higher selves and ‘Glory’, which is the name of the Oscar-winning song he wrote with John Legend for the film Selma. 

He was christened Lonnie Rashid Lynn. Raised by a mother who was an educator and then a principal in a school, Common learned about work ethic early on. “[My mum] enrolled me into a computer class which I initially didn’t want to do and I eventually had to, and that taught me a lot about commitment, discipline, and working to achieve your goals. It’s in my DNA and spirit to work.” She had him doing extra-curricular book reports, reading the likes of Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni.

Common is an educator of sorts himself – and not only because he launched his own school, Art In Motion, in South Shore Chicago. For his fans, he embodies a duality of strength and leadership alongside vulnerability and faith. It was a former teacher, Mr Brown, who he cites as being a huge inspiration in his life. “He was really adamant about us being excellent and conducting ourselves in ways that were respectful and honourable,” he tells me. “But he related to us. We would laugh with him. He felt like a teacher, a guide and an elder, but I also felt I had a friend in him.”

At a time when discussions around men and hypermasculinity are in vogue, it’s worth noting that artists like Common have been offering up an alternative example of what it means to be a successful man for decades. On his track ‘The 6th Sense’, which came out in 2000, he raps: “Greet brothers with handshakes on ghetto landscapes, Where a man is determined by how much a man make.” In truth, not much has changed since then.

As we’re speaking, he lists the familiar constraints of traditional masculinity. “The world tells you, to be a man you have to be strong, and you’re the breadwinner, and that men don’t show weakness. We were taught not to show certain emotions or to be forgiving, humble or even to acknowledge flaws.”

Fortunately, Common found ways out of that cage. “I grew up in an environment where we were taught to be tough. I’m from the south side of Chicago,” but within those surroundings Common found other men who accepted him as he was. “My friends embraced me for being unique and I embraced their uniqueness.” This resulted in him being able to share things like, “I’m losing my hair, man; it’s stressing me out.” Or “Man, them crocheted pants I was wearing was crazy,” he laughs. “You can’t take yourself too serious. Shoot, most of the time when I’m going to do press stuff, I’m getting a haircut and all that you see me presenting my best. But that ain’t who I am just sitting at home.”

Full of sage advice at 54 years old, he’s got perspective on the world: “I want to live life to the fullest and experience the happiness and the pains. I want to work through them. I’d rather confront them than run from them and act like they don’t exist.”

Naturally, we arrive at the subject of spirituality, which weaves its way into many of his responses. It’s the backbone of his strength and resilience. His mother took him to a church in Chicago as a child which had the words “Unapologetically Black, Unashamedly Christian” ingrained on the walls. It invited characters such as Minister Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam to speak to the congregation which exposed Common to different ways of thinking, broadening his world view. “I really learned a lot about being a black man, and a black kid through the pastor.”

It was around the time that his first album, Can I Borrow A Dollar? came out that his faith was cemented. While several reviews called it “clever”, the album wasn’t received as well as he expected which destabilised him. He thought “as soon as you come out with an album, success just happens – everybody I saw with a video I thought was successful.” His feelings of failure led him to soul-searching and developing his relationship with God, supplementing reading the Bible with engaging with the Quran.

Over the years, he’s faced further setbacks: “Your career goes up and down, it’s not like every moment people are calling you and you’re so in demand.” At times when he felt lost, grounding himself in real life has replenished his creative energies. “If you live life and experience things, what you offer is going to be unique and it has more of a chance to stand out.” 

Shirt and trousers: Labrum; glasses: Cutler & Gross; ring: Serge Di Nimes; shoes: Vagabond.

He’s certainly lived some life – and been in rooms where history has been made and celebrated. A highlight in his career was performing at an event BET threw at the White House for Obama’s presidency. “To be in the White House, and DJ D-Nice is DJing and he’s playing Mobb Deep and Nas and Mary J Blige… it was one of those moments where I just couldn’t believe it was happening.” The Roots, Jill Scott, Usher and Yolanda Adams also performed.

Several of Common’s projects have really connected with his audiences and left his mark in the music history books. In 2005, he released Be, an album produced mostly by Kanye West and long-time collaborator, J Dilla. It brought together the best of West’s genius production and sampling with spoken word to create something special. The album was critically acclaimed and received a perfect score from XXL magazine. The video for the storytelling track ‘Testify’ is something of a mini-movie featuring Taraji P Henson, and he featured regularly on MTV, which was very much a benchmark for success and visibility at the time.

Common’s last album, The Auditorium Vol. 1 (2024) offers mature flows that show just how much life he has experienced now. On ‘Wise Up’, he says: “The Lord sent my mental to be more than sentimental, The ventricles that I vent through are temples of what I been through.”

Today his daily spiritual practice involves starting his morning with gratitude, meditation and reading: “Having scriptures that mean something to me and being able to say these scriptures out loud [is important] because I understand the power of words. The power of the tongue is for real.” He would know, the power of words is what has brought him to where he is now.

Leather jacket: Savile Row Sports Club; glasses: Cutler & Gross; ring: Cernucci

As well as food and diet, he includes exercise as being connected to his spirituality, as that’s how he releases “negative energies.” But he’s not “lifting weights to get buff. I want to cut and move around. My thing is plyometrics.” Common’s father, Lonnie Lynn was a professional basketball player and he grew up with an intense love for the sport and the dynamism it requires. “Some of my friends will be like, ‘Yo, come play golf.’ I’m like, ‘Nah, I need to move a little more.’”

A lot of what Common grew up in proximity to is tied into his life philosophy. He’s also come full circle with figures who helped shape him through their work, rather than their actual presence. Another prominent Black figure who was invited to perform at the White House by Obama was the late, great poet and author, Maya Angelou, with whom Common shared a special relationship. Angelou was one of the most influential civil rights activists who documented her experience on the front line of the movement. 

“She was one of the most prominent inspirations to me as a writer in the fifth grade,” he says. “Sitting across the table from her at her home in Harlem, just me and her, that was one of the moments where I was like, ‘How did I get here?’”

He invited Dr Angelou to visit his Common Ground Foundation, his non-profit which works with young people. “She had fun. These are the things that we need to know about our heroes. She was funny,” he chuckles as he explains how people suggested that she could be his grandmother – and she joked that she could have been his girlfriend. 

He was working on the film Selma when news broke that she had passed away in 2014. He heard the news as he stepped into the makeup trailer. “I was walking into the trailer and Oprah was sitting right there and we were both just having a moment of ‘Like man, we both just lost one of the most important people that we’ve both had a connection with.’ I knew what she meant to her as a Black woman and a writer and what she meant to me. She was the only person who I’ve ever seen my mum look like a little girl around.”

Dr Angelou gets name-checked in his track ‘The Day Women Took Over’ (2016) with the lyrics, “The day women took over, let it continue, Now women get paid as much as men do, Dr Angelou’s lookin’ from Heaven’s window, Tellin’ young girls Phenomenal Woman is in you.” Does he think the world would be a better place if women did take over?

“I truly do,” he replies, not missing a beat. “I wasn’t saying that to get women points,” he smiles. “I was speaking to when I’ve seen women in positions of leadership, how great things have been operated and run. It’s something about the care, the compassion, the communication.”

Common’s awareness of how important access and exposure are for young minds is part of why he brought some of the young people his foundation works with to visit the set for Silo, the dystopian Apple TV show he is currently starring in, which is filmed in London. It’s one of the things he’s most proud of to date. “I know how much travel meant to me as a 25-year-old when I first came to London. I grew up around a lot of people who hadn’t even been past downtown Chicago.”

Shop the look: Jacket and trousers: Savile Row Sports Club; cardigan and T-shirt: Mr Porter; shoes: Hogan

He stays true to his name by remaining close to a lot of the people he grew up with. “I feel a duty to that in itself,” he says. “When I see someone in my family, dealing with something like trying to get this bill paid while their son is maybe going to jail, then that stuff keeps you grounded. It keeps you for real.”

Common has been a prominent voice calling for prison reforms over the years, lobbying Illinois state legislators alongside fellow Chicagoan, Chance The Rapper, to get them to restore a parole system. He’s also taken his activism within the walls of correctional facilities in various ways, including performing, speaking and running music programmes for inmates.

“I’ve paid visits to people who are incarcerated, I still go connect with people in the hood, so I can never feel like I’m above when I’m seeing people that are really dealing with economic struggle.”

The work ethic that his mother planted in him continues to propel him forward, as series three of Silo is about to air, and he’s coming back to the UK for a special performance at The Roots Picnic this summer. The weekend will also feature Yasiin Bey, Anthony Hamilton and Nas. It’s a summer of nostalgia and reliving those important eras of music as Lauryn Hill also has a festival scheduled in the UK.

Shirt: Toga; trousers: Saville Row Sports Club; shoes: Hogan

In the days following my interview with Common, he appeared on 2026 BET Awards performing alongside Queen Latifah as part of a tribute to Lauryn Hill who received the Living Legend Icon Award. The line-up of artists who covered her classics included Nas, Doechii, SZA, Tems, Tierra Whack and Lizzo who all gave outstanding performances, but Common and Queen Latifah brought the house down with their rendition of ‘Lost Ones’. The clips for the various performances are shared far and wide. These live performances resonate because they show how the most exciting young artists today wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for those who paved the way.

Common remains a significant figure in the culture – and the fact he is still creating in an industry built on constant churn is testament to his talent and work ethic. The lifestyle he’s living has clearly got something going for it, because he shows no signs of slowing down.

I wonder what’s next for Common in terms of acting, and what roles he’d like to take on. As well as playing a complex, troubled lead on a TV show, he’d like to take on the role of Gil Scott-Heron, the poet who wrote The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The title of that poem forms the opening lines to the aforementioned track, ‘The 6th Sense’. “That’s one of my dream roles,” he says.

Maybe the power of his words will bring the circle back around. Maybe that’s the role that will get him a Tony. We’ll have to wait and see. 

The new series of Silo is out now on Apple TV.