'It was coming from me, but it was also the voice of many others,' he tells MTV News of his atypically raw lyrics.
By Rob Markman
Common
Photo: Warner Bros.
Throughout much of his career, Common has been quite the ladies' man, so it may have been surprising for some when he opened his new single with: "I want a bitch that look good and cook good."
On the Nas-assisted, No I.D.-produced single "Ghetto Dreams," from Common's upcoming album The Dreamer, The Believer, the Chicago rapper/actor offers a lyrical list of qualities that any would-be lady friend should possess, and while it may sound crude, the MC insists the song is highly conceptualized.
For Common, it all started with No I.D.'s swirling beat and the Nas vocal sample he laid on top of it. "Once he sampled that 'Ghetto Dreams' sample from Nas, it was like, 'Man.' That vocal sample was like, 'Damn this gives me a straight direction and way to go'," Com said in an exclusive video interview with MTV News.
"I was like, 'I want a bitch that look good and cook good.' I was just thinking about being in the 'hood, what I want, and then the song goes on from there," he said of the opening line that ends with the lyric "Cinderella fancy, but she still look 'hood."
"Right there I'm saying, 'Look, I want a bad woman.' She look raw and she could cook and she could get very elegant, but at the same token she has the know-how in the street."
According to the lyrics, the dream lover the MC describes is uninhibited enough to have sex in the backseat of a car and smoke marijuana but still totes a Bible. "That says a lot about her," Common reasoned. "She could get high, you might get high with her, she might drink, smoke a jay with her, but at the end of the day, she still got her Bible there."
Com Sense even references his fantasy girl's love for Beyoncé, because "what woman in America don't love Beyoncé?" he questions while chuckling.
On the surface, it might sound superficial, but Common explained that, in the Chi-Town neighborhood where he grew up, having the right woman by your side signified success. Instead of writing in the first person, he personified that 'hood mentality.
"I wrote it about someone in the neighborhood that got a dream of reaching a higher level and they're in that process, and their woman is really like the correlation and the parallel and the symbol to that progress," he said. "It was coming from me, but it was also the voice of many others."
What do you think of Common's new song? Let us know in the comments!
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