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We've been covering Common since the beginning of his career, Jim. Absolutely. And there are various signpost albums where you can say there was a... you know a big leap in his ambition and his ability to pull off those ambitions and I think this is one of those records where Everybody really started to pay attention to this guy. There have been tracks here and there. The albums up to then have been pretty good. This album put him on sort of a bigger international radar.
and there's been no turning back since then really and you know the work he'd done and everything he stood for is suddenly inspiring these other great artists, like Members of the Roots and D'Angelo and Macy Gray. I mean, you know, common... Common has a rare kind of charisma. He walks into a room and it's just like, wow. Well, exactly. And, you know, we did a show, basically an entire show devoted to the great producer. the late, great producer Jay Dilla a few months ago. And, you know...
Common connecting those worlds, J. Dilla's world in Detroit with what was going on in Chicago, soon to be Kanye West, soon to be Lupe Fiasco. with the Soul Aquarians and the Philly thing with the Roots and Questlove. Common's kind of the common denominator, you know, with all of those scenes. No kidding. Without any further ado, let's dive into Like Water for Chalk. Yo, what's happening? All right, so who is common, Mr. Cott? Lonnie Rashid Lynn, born in 1972.
You know, he's an icon today. He's an American rapper. He's an actor. Probably better known to many people as an actor than anything else, although he's never stopped making albums. And we've argued, we've reviewed them all, that they've all been very good. Never a drop. Born in Chicago, his mom was a principal at John Hope College Prep High School. An educator, right? Dad was a former semi-pro basketball player turned youth counselor.
They divorced and dad moved to Denver, Colorado, but he was still always a presence in Commons life. Got him a job at one point, I think, as an usher for the Chicago Bulls. But raised by his mom in Calumet Heights, he starts rapping when he's in high school, Luther High School on the south side. And with two of his friends, he forms a group, CDR.
They open for the likes of NWA and Big Daddy Kane. Yeah. And I think young Lonnie says, when I go out on my own, I'm not going to sound like either of those. You know, from the beginning, one can argue. And this has long been the knock. uncommon that he is a backpacker, a granola eater, a hippie, all because he's socially conscious. I think as we talk about this album, like Water for Chocolate, and indeed his career, there's always been more to him than meets the eye. He's a great storyteller.
Story arcs often that start on one album and continue on others, him playing character. In the great rock and roll tradition of David Bowie or Peter Gabriel, you know, portraying an assassin or a killer, you know, sometimes Common has played the gangster. His heart is with socially conscious rap, and he is a proud feminist. the father of a daughter, a bit of a heartthrob. He's had an impressive list of loves in his life. I think from the beginning, when he's Common Sense, 1992.
his first solo album. Three albums early on that are indie records. Can I Borrow a Dollar, Resurrection in 94, One Day It'll All Make Sense, and then he signs to a major... Like Water for Chocolate is his first for the majors, MCA. You know, can I borrow a dollar? You hear a young rapper who's not sure where he fits in, right? Elizabeth, this is a big one. I mean a doozy.
Gangster rap is dominating on the East Coast and on the West Coast, eventually in hot Atlanta. Chicago, where does Chicago fit in? House music. House music and gospel and the blues. We have this rich tradition. I will argue that it's with Resurrection album number two and the single. I used to love her, H-E-R, that he finds his voice. It is a freaking masterpiece.
What is HER? He is talking about a woman who loses her way in the world and is lured by loose sex, by drugs, by the fast and loose image that the media consistently produces. But he's also talking about hip hop. H-E-R is hip hop in its essence is real, is what Common says. That's what H-E-R stands for. He is talking about what he loves. about this fantastic black art form, where it came from, gospel and blues and the Afrocentric tradition, Afrofuturism.
the envisioning of an ideal world where there is no racism. All of that's in there. It got him in a major feud with a West Coast crew. You know, how dare you tell me what real hip-hop is, Mr. Lin? And, you know, Common can hold his own because his secret superpower, his strength. He is, I think, I've seen Eminem freestyle. Common's the best. Common is the best freestyle rapper or one of the best top three that I've ever heard.
You know, we've had him in other interviews where we've thrown out a topic. You know, you know, can you rap about the phone book? And, you know, he takes all of five seconds to give us 10 lines of rhyme that are exquisite about the freaking phone book. He saw me once reviewing him at a show.
I was in the balcony of the House of Blues. He goes, hey, yo, you got to listen to this. The Sun and the Times, Jim Deere got it. And he points me out, which led this young, annoying rapper to come up and start pulling on my shoulders. Yo, man, yo, man, yo, man. Common, all right. But I'm coming up. You got to listen to me. That's when I got my first Kanye West mixtape. You rhyme anything with dearer goddess. You're a genius. He signs to MCA.
right he never really leaves he comes back here all the time he has family Chicago is 100% part of his ethos, but he says it's time for me to mix it up. After these three indie albums and this one major hit with I Used to Love Her, One Day It'll All Make Sense is starting to get him his props, album number three. but he wants to do something for album number four that is different, and he wants to do it in a new locale.
And he moves out east, based in New York, but spending a lot of time in Philadelphia. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this whole neo-soul movement was starting to emerge right around that time. A lot of people marked the day. when D'Angelo put out his first album, Brown Sugar, in 1995. Suddenly things changed. You know, hip-hop and R&B were stagnating in producer-driven formula. That was at least the idea. I mean, I used to love her.
Common's sort of talking about the fact that rap's lost its way. It has become, you know, kind of cliche. And D'Angelo kind of said, no, we can figure out a way to move the genres forward, music forward, black music forward. And Brown Sugar was the start of it. That was almost like a blueprint or a starting point for what he really wanted to get into. In 1997... D'Angelo begins working on the follow-up. I mean, Brown Sugar had sold a million copies, but D'Angelo still felt...
It was a little too formulaic. He hadn't got where he wanted to be. So we hook up with Illadelphia. Philadelphia's finest, Roots drummer, Amir Questlove Thompson. Yeah. The whole concept of the Soulquarians is born, this collective of artists. a loose jam-oriented approach to recording. In some ways, you know, if you go back for antecedents, they are referencing music from the past. You know, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Sly Stone. Bob Marley, George Clinton in the Parliament Funkadelic.
One of the templates, too, was Jimi Hendrix, the way he recorded the Electric Ladyland record. Come on into the studio. Let's do something.
Yeah. Let's figure it out as we're going along. We'll worry about where the track runs up and whose track it is, whose album, what it is, right? After the fact, right? Let's just make music now. And, you know, when I talked to Amir about that... period and d'angelo as well i interviewed him after the record was made they would come in and play records for each other yeah they would just sort of sit and muse about
This, wow, this really turns me out. Or they played an old video. Questlove was an amazing collector of stuff. So that, you know, something was being born in that. vibe around the Soulquarians collective. And when I say collective, I'm talking about artists like Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, The Root.
Gangstar, Q-Tip and A Tribe Called Quest, Maxwell, Macy Gray. They weren't necessarily members, but they were all part of the vibe that was going through there. And there was a studio band associated with, you know, great musicians like James Boiser. key to the sound. Pino Palladino on bass. Pino Palladino, whom we interviewed, comes in and starts playing bass. And he said, kind of changed his whole thinking about what the bass could do and what role it could play in the music making.
So the roots make their landmark record, Things Fall Apart in 1999, as part of this ongoing soul querying session. in Electric Lady Studios, the studio that Hendrix was building. when he died. You know, I was in a sub-basement on 8th Street in Manhattan. I passed it every day on my way to school at NYU. It was a little difficult to work there because it was dank and dark and underground and the subway train. was under the studio. So, you know, sometimes the subway is on the record. Right. Right.
So Voodoo comes out, the record that the Soul Aquarians have been working on for two, three years comes out in 2000 and blows up everything. This is a new, one of the landmark records, kind of a signpost of the 21st century, the Neo Soul Movement. comes into its glory. A dense, gritty, late-night vibe, you know, very loose and at the same time...
song-oriented was the absolute apex of what they were attempting to achieve. And Common was a kindred spirit. You know, he was intrigued by what was going on. Common, as we soon found out, was an experimenter. He wanted to screw around with the formula. And what Common was doing ends up influencing a whole lot of other musicians down the road. We're going to talk about that in a minute. Sound Opinions is sponsored by Karsten's Records.
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You can find 312 Weed Ale, Big Juicy Beer Hug, and so many other limited releases at either of Goose's locations in Chicago. Goose Island Beer Company, Chicago's Beer. This week, we're revisiting our classic album dissection of Commons Like Water for Chocolate for the record's 25th anniversary.
Now we've got a special treat for our listeners. This is an interview we did with Common after that album first came out in 2000. I can remember it like it happened yesterday. Oh, man. I cannot believe it's been a quarter century. Really.
His mom had driven him to the studio, and she was waiting downstairs for him. If we'd known that comment, we would have invited her up. Yeah, we could make some tea. That's right. We started off by asking him about what it's like to collaborate with his friends, the Soulquarians.
God, your friends are all over this album. And it's like amazing. I mean, you were able to call on Erykah Badu and D'Angelo and The Roots produced the record. You know, how'd you get props from these people? They're like all your fans. Right. Well, it's like... We all from the same wound of music, honestly. We all have the same destination and same goals in music, and that's to put out good music. Throughout our careers, we have crossed paths. And each one of us has adored each other musically.
So it was natural for us to work together and natural for us to help each other out. It's like what I feel right now is for the music to have its balance. And for us to progress, it has to be a movement of us moving collectively. You know like where Erykah Badu... who has more selves than the common sense. can appear on the Common Sense album.
and in turn helped bring more of an audience to common sense. And you appeared on that Roots album, and Lauryn Hill's worked with you in the past. It's really encouraging to hear you use the word movement, where they were calling it natural R&B, what is kind of an exciting return. to live performance as well, because that's an integral part of what you do. You have a band often when you play. Yeah. I perform with a band called a black girl named Becky.
Which there is no such thing. Right, exactly. Ain't no black girls named Becky. Right, so that was the whole significance of the name of the band. I just utilized the band, and I think within music, What we're trying to do is show appreciation for musicianship. and show that the elements of music we should utilize because it's a gift for people to be able to play instruments.
come together under one spirit is important. You've taken some courageous stands against the messages. You don't diss women. You don't glorify senseless violence. And the new album, it has some really complex... skits and some songs built around those issues you're asking people to think yeah definitely I mean because I feel in music that we have been given this platform to speak to a lot of people and In music, I want people to think it's about entertaining and educating.
And if this music can be used to make people think and uplift people and be a healing mechanism. then I would love, that's what I love to try to do with it. What I love about this movement, Common, is the way you guys are sort of playing on each other's records. There's a crossover between the R&B guys and the hip-hop guys. Questlove of the Roots.
You know, produced your record. He was a big factor in the D'Angelo record, the drummer. Erykah Badu floating around in there. You've got most deaf, you know, appearing on people's records. There's this great... crossover between live instrumentation of the R&B world and the sort of the grit and the production values of the hip-hop world and integrating those two. Did you see sort of, you know, did the R&B and hip-hop worlds, did you always see those?
coming together because there's a tendency to divide those worlds especially in the 80s there was like a line drawn between those two worlds and I see them coming back together again in the style of music you guys Yeah, definitely. Like you said, in the early, well, later 80s, it was like the thing was like... Forget the R&B stuff, you know, I'm not R&B. So it was like going against R&B. But I think we gradually grew to understand that R&B was also helping us.
get out to a larger audience because like I remember I think the first collaboration I heard was Jody Watley and Rakim do a song called Friends. And, you know, Rakim is one of the most respected hip-hop artists. And for us to see him doing an R&B song, he just made a lot of stuff valid. And then it was like, hey, this is the platform to get...
us hip-hop artists out to the world. And then as hip-hop grew bigger, the R&B artists wanted to get to the hip-hop crowd. We saw a lot of that. A lot of people incorporated in rapping. Right. So honestly, I mean, our ties is like about music. It's like from D'Angelo to Mos Def, it's about just making good music. Got number, came out number one when the Roots got a Grammy, when most death went gold. I mean, all those are steps.
steps forward for our movement. And it's like a statement saying that people do want to hear some progressive music. They don't just want to hear thong song. Assata Shakur, who was convicted of shooting a Jersey cop in 1973. She was a Black Panther, one of the leaders of the Jersey movement.
Sentenced to prison. Many people said she was framed. Escaped from prison. Yeah. Escaped from prison in Jersey. Made it down to Cuba where you went to visit her. Yeah. It was an unusual experience and a beautiful experience. I read her autobiography and just got into her whole story and it was inspiring so I decided I had to go meet her.
I can honestly say that that trip was like the seed for this album. Not just only meeting her, but just being in Cuba, seeing people that were really... fighting for what they believed in and living for equality. and just people that love music for the love of music. And also realizing that the way Americans sometimes talk about Cuba is not necessarily the truth. It's not the truth all the time, exactly. You dealt with this problem.
on a track called Payback is a Grandmother. And you and I were talking about this when we did an interview for the paper, which is this kind of comical... skit you know in the introduction of a lot of like what started with uh nwa where you're kind of seeking vengeance for a guy who mugged your grandma you know but at the same and it doesn't end happily you know you you start to go down this violent path and uh You suffer for it. Right, exactly. Yo, tight. I be right over.
I believe within my music. I try to put balance. So I like doing some comical things, some raw things, showing the different sides of common sense and that you can be a person. It's doing good, but I might curse sometimes, you know, and I might have a beer. There's some sex and drugs and rock and roll on this record. Right, exactly. So I ain't squeaky clean. But Questlove executive produced the album and the Soul Aquarians, which is Questlove.
James Poyser, who played on the Lauryn Hill, who played on Lauryn Hill's album in retrospect for life, Erykah Badu. material, along with JD and D'Angelo, all four in the Soul Aquarians. They produced the album along with Premiere and a black girl named Beck. Right. And when you work with your band, how do you... That's just the greatest band name ever. When you work with a black girl named Becky, how do you communicate?
I mean, is it just like, because I think that a lot of the rock audiences still don't understand what rappers do. But I mean, you're essentially filling the role of a lead vocalist, right? Yeah, I'm a lead vocalist and a band leader. Because I tell them, look, I want the music to drop here. I want the bass to come out here. I want you to hit the snare a couple times right here. So I'm serving as a band leader.
You're the James Brown. I'm the James Brown myself. I'm the James Brown. Exactly. Let's talk a little bit about growing up in Chicago and becoming a hip-hop artist, Common, because you didn't have a whole lot of local role models. when you were growing up in the 80s here. You know, this was not a hip-hop town. No, it didn't. Third largest city in the United States at the time, L.A., New York, hip-hop all the time, 24-7.
Chicago didn't want to have anything to do with hip-hop. It was considered a house town, primarily. Where did you fit in with that? Where were you coming from growing up and ended up becoming a rap artist? Well... I think I always loved music, though I was in sports too a lot. I got introduced to hip-hop too.
The breakdancing aspect of it. And then also through a little bit of hearing some rap songs that came from New York, such as Rapper's Delight, Sugar Hill Gang, which came out in 79. As I started hearing more and more hip-hop... the New York side. I noticed that it was some hip-hop artists out here. It wasn't on a large scale, but there were some hip-hop artists out here.
And I felt that, you know, I just had to develop my hip-hop in my own little cave, you know, or lab, laboratory. So I just went and sought hip-hop out. Like, I would listen to the college radio station. and get to hear some hip-hop on either the weekends or Wednesday nights. And it was like, I would go and get friends who would give me New York tape.
And eventually NWA tapes and West Coast tapes. So I got influenced through that and then developed my own style of music. So were you doing like freestyling and stuff like that? Yeah, that was one of the main things. That's why. I continue to be able to freestyle because I used to freestyle back then, you know, and what we know as freestyling is improvisation.
You know improvisational rhyming. What were the kind of things you were listening to as a kid? Obviously you were listening to hip-hop records. They were speaking to you. What other kinds of stuff were you listening to as a kid growing up that sort of developed?
the kind of sounds that you're making now, because you have a very soulful bass to your records. People can connect what you're doing now to the kind of stuff that they were hearing in the 60s and 70s. I used to listen to Curtis Mayfield. I listened to the Brothers Johnson. Like, I love that Strawberry 23. Right. That was, oh, that just brings back memories. That little synth there, yeah, okay, there we go. It just brings back some memories. And Stevie Wonder, I love him.
And I loved Marvin Gaye and the Jackson 5. A lot of solo artists like that. Earth, Wind & Fire was definitely an influence. Now, were you buying these records, or was your mom buying them, or where were you getting these records from? Were you hearing them on the radio, or how did it go? It would come from like a lot of times, I remember early from my babysitter.
Two of my babysitters always used to listen to a lot of music. And then it was like, I don't think my mother listened to a lot of music. She ain't never really just be playing records for me. I would go get them because I heard them and I liked them. I remember buying like... Stevie Wonder's Hotter Than July album, playing that Happy Birthday song he did for Martin Luther King, playing that over and over, you know? So it was like, I would go out and get the records mostly.
Did you see a distinction between that stuff and the hip-hop stuff, the rap stuff? Or did you see it all as one big sort of tradition coming out of the same kind of tradition? I think I saw a little distinction because that's kind of what attracted me to hip-hop because hip-hop was kind of revolutionary at the time and it was like it was going against the grain of what was like because at that time it was like For young kids, it was like the new addition and, you know, the kind of like...
Little pop, new kids on the block. Before that, it was minuto type, you know. And that wasn't stuff I was really relating to. I was relating to New Edition. It was like hip-hop had his own little like set And I was like, man, I like that. It was representing some revolutionary stuff, and it was done in a masculine way. We have to mention, I think while you're on the word revolutionary,
about the cover art. It's called Like Water for Chocolate, and you're, of course, referring to the novel and the film, and it's this striking photograph of an African-American woman looking like she might have just come from church on a Sunday morning, all dressed up, drinking from a coloreds-only... water fountain in front of a hot dog stand. Very much in line with the Roots album. That came out with these four different covers.
All really striking black and white photos. The girl running from the police during the Newark riots, I think it was. You're saying right bold up front, I'm talking about politics and community here. Yeah, definitely. And connecting it back. And history. Yeah, because this is from the 50s, this photo, or 60s. Yeah, it seems like it's a Gordon Parks photo. It seems like. It's from the early 60s, maybe.
I definitely was saying, being in tune with the history and knowing where we come from, I was trying to make people aware of that. And also, I felt the subliminal meaning was like... Yo, she drinking from a colored-only water fountain. She drinking water for chocolate, you know? So that's why I put it. As critics, Greg and I have been harsh on a lot of the state of hip-hop and R&B because it seems to me that they lost the thread of the history.
for the last 10 years or so. And much as Nirvana came up and said, we remember the Sex Pistols, we remember Black Sabbath, we're going to reconnect to these roots. and rock and roll it seems like that's what this movement that you keep talking about is actually doing and saying wait a minute they've kind of gotten ahistorical here I don't know where Master P came from but he thinks everything was born yesterday and I don't
Boy, y'all ain't got no love for Master P, do you? I'll put DMX in that same book. I thought Master P was kind of interesting, the first record, but he made the same record seven times already, and so does everybody else on his label, and you kind of realize... For these guys, it's no longer about
At one time, that was a distinctive sound. That New Orleans thing had sort of a distinctive thing to it. But now, every artist on the label is making the same record, and you realize it's a formula for making money. I think the Biggie stuff is in the same tradition, and I think that the two-pack... legacy oh my god there you go you hit it on the spot it's like if Tupac was alive man a lot of these cats would not be able to come in saying I'm a thug I mean
Not that that's something that should be glorified, but Tupac was the one that was coming saying that. Not everybody. He took his style, his whole demeanor, and I went in off of it. And, you know, me personally, I don't listen. to too much of that. I might hear it on the radio in passing, hear it at a club. But I don't listen to that stuff, you know, point blank.
do your thing, but that's not me. I ain't really enjoying that music. And the hollowness of it when he's putting out as many albums now that he's dead as he did when he was alive. Well, yeah. I mean, you know, there's no way he's going to be endorsing half-finished tracks coming out, but it's the same thing they did to Hendrix.
You know, that is the oldest story in popular music and corporations exploiting a catalog like that. To everybody out there, this song is called The Light Off The Light Water for Chocolate Album. We're getting into it right here on Sound Opinion. When we return, we break down some of our favorite tracks off Like Water for Chocolate. That's in a minute on Sound Opinions. And we are back. This week, we're celebrating the 25th anniversary of one of our favorite hip-hop records.
like Water for Chocolate by Common. Absolutely true, Jim, and we want to talk through some of our favorite tracks on the album. Jim, why don't you start us off? The Sixth Sense is an amazing song. It's the only song on Like Water for Chocolate that's produced not by a member of the Soulquarians, but by DJ Premier from Gangstar. You know, it samples The Intruders, and it samples Mobb Deep, a fascinating song giving us a young neo-soul artist at the time, Bilal, singing the chorus.
And this is where Poor Common gets the rap of being preachy sometimes. But, you know, I don't see it that way. He is talking to the unemployed. sometime drug dealing, up to no good, guys hanging on the street corner, as he says, with the cigarette behind their ear. And he says they want to be in the rat race, but they can't even make one laugh. And he's saying, look, I'd be lying if I didn't say I want to make millions. But more important to me is our children.
And, you know, I don't think it's saying you're living wrong. You got to live better so much as it's saying, think bigger, brother. Right. And Bilal comes in with these wordless choruses. Oh, yes, you know, you know. Right. It's not saying anything, but it says everything in the way that even if you don't speak English, you hear a great gospel song and you begin to realize possibilities for other ways to live your life.
Don't you think? Absolutely. You know, the whole idea here was about conceiving of something better than what we have. I think the whole idea of the record, the object of the record was that. Let's hear a little of Sixth Sense. The Sixth Sense by Common from Like Water for Chocolate. Greg, I think I know where you want to go next. Well, Jim, you know, this record, the idea of the collective, you know, the idea that we are agnostic when it comes to genre.
You know, whether it's jazz, it's R&B, it's rock, it's soul, it's all welcome here. We want all of that flavor. We want to get Afrobeat in here. A lot of Afrobeat. You know, shout out to Fela. Femi Kuti is on this record. I mean, it's, you know, Roy Hargrove from the jazz world, Mos Def, you know, D'Angelo himself on this record. CeeLo Green. And of course, Slum Village. And why do I reference Slum Village?
Every time we've talked to Common, you could not escape the name Jay Dilla. He and Jay were like kindred spirits. We talked with Dan Charnas about this great book that he's written about Jay Dilla. who still probably hasn't gotten all the props he deserves because he's totally reinvented the game. He's such an inspiration behind what happened with the voodoo sessions, and he was equally important on Commons records around this period of time.
Common wanted to do a track with Slum Village, which was Jay Dilla's group at the time. And Jay Dilla and James Poyser had worked out a track that, you know, Hague Common said, let's get Slum Village on that track. Yeah. And Dilla does his usual thing of just shutting up.
which kind of meant not interested. I mean, I wrote that track, but I don't see us on that track. He comes back in the studio the next day and comes up with a track that he just made up, put together that night called Thelonious.
And he goes, no, this is what we're going to do. This is the one. This is the one we're going to work on. So Thelonious kind of gets at the spirit of the record. All four MCs on the record, Common plus the three guys from Slow Village, are all trading off verses on this record. The fact that it was sort of cooked up overnight's classic J. Dilla, those kind of, you know, kind of a moody track. Those off-balance beats, you know, where is the one? It's going to be all over the place.
And these guys were all dexterous enough where they could come up with rhymes and lines that were worked with those rhythms. It was inspiring to them. So they had a great day in the studio where they just kept firing out these lines at each other. And I think the spirit of the record in some ways is embodied by this track. Here's a little bit of Thelonious from Like Water for Chocolate on Sound Opinions.
Thelonious, man. You know, Greg, we could really talk about every one of these 16 tracks. As a line on the record says, more juice than Sunkist. Yeah. Right? Yeah. This album is rich with the good. But I'm going to Commons tribute to Philadelphia. Ghetto Heaven Remix, T-S-O-I, that is the sound of Illidelph. You know, I think if you're not an East Coaster as I was, you've got to realize... on a good day without a lot of traffic, you know, Philadelphia is like an hour.
from from manhattan you know uh they are sister cities in a way but it has a different vibe you know i mean even just the way the city's laid out it's still based on horse path that go back to when they were writing the Declaration of Independence there. You know, it is an historic city. It is a wonderful city. It is a city of many. different cultures living together. The city of Brotherly. So this song starts out and actually winds up as Ghetto Heaven.
by D'Angelo on Voodoo, right? It's one of those songs. Faith Penick was telling us the story when we had her on the show, episode 778, about the making of... of uh of uh d'angelo's voodoo you know sometimes they'd wrestle a little uh the whole soul quarians crew about that track was slamming. I want it. No, I want it. No, I want it. Right. So, uh, you know, ghetto heaven winds up on, on voodoo, but, uh, ghetto heaven remix the sound of illa Delph.
winds up on Common's record. And we have the great man. God, I've always loved Macy Gray I vaguely remember you giving me some guff for loving Macy Gray because, you know, look, her voice is an acquired taste, right? Betty Boop a little bit. But it underscores Common's love of women. You know, the third verse, man, the music is so much bigger than me. As far as happy, it's like a trigger to me.
Dealing with crap rappers, groupie broads, record execs, at times it do be hard to choose words, be heard across waters, doing something you like to support. daughters, right? I cannot overemphasize the love and respect uh for his daughter i remember i've seen her grown up every time i've seen common is he's back in chicago to visit his daughter right you know um his love of women his respect for women but not necessarily always preachy there's a little skit on this album
where a woman comes up and says, I love you so much because of your enlightened take on women, right? Can I get your autograph? And then somebody else interrupts him, and he goes off on this woman as the B word, how come you're not out? making money via sex work you know he is laughing at himself right and even daring to suggest that he is a hypocrite but uh you know this is this is an amazing song Ghetto Heaven Remix, T-S-O-I, from Like Water for Chocolate.
Ghetto Heaven. I love the Macy Gray versus, again, not necessarily saying much of anything. Need a little Ghetto Heaven. And Macy's kind of maybe lost the plot lately, but she was great on this track. Yeah. You know, in a similar vein, the track A Film Called Pimp is in that vein. And again, you talk about Common is able to go from the personal to role-playing, playing characters, and he plays one here.
in this particular track. And again, he brings on the great MC Light. This, in some ways, to me, is a sequel to I Used to Love Her, where he's talking about, hey, rap's lost its way. Similar themes here. In the context of, okay, I'm going to imagine this scenario like a blaxploitation film from the 70s with an appropriate soundtrack. So we're going to take some of those 70s films that I... that my parents would have watched, you know, the shafts of the world, you know. Superfly. Superfly.
across 110th Street and giving it this vibe of the street hustler trying to recruit MC Light, but she ain't having it. She's giving it back to him. Twice as bad as he's given it to her. So she's representing hip-hop, and she's putting the pimp in his place. I'm not going to buy into what you're trying to sell me. You're just a hustler. So in a sense, as I said, sort of like the response to I Used to Love Her with this particular track. But again, an example of the storytelling.
that Common is capable of creating. And at the same time, bringing in an artist, an MC, that he's loved, MC Light. Here's the two of them on a film called Pimp. That is a film called Pimp, one of the tracks from Like Water for Chocolate. As you said, Jim, we could probably play all of the... you know, bounty of tracks on this record to give an example of how, what an incredible achievement this was. It's interesting when we talk about the legacy of this record.
that Common followed it up with Electric Circus, which went in many ways even further. than this record in terms of its experimental life. I love that record. Nobody loves that record. No, we both gave it great reviews. And I think part of the reason was that it was so far afield from what hip-hop was supposed to sound like. that not many people who are hip-hop heads loved it. It's a psychedelic rock record. I remember him telling me he grew up, you couldn't escape the loop.
station if you lived anywhere near Chicago. So he falls in love with Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. He says, I'm going to try to do that. And, you know, he used the soul Aquarians. The soul Aquarians were a big part of the record in many ways. It was a quintessential.
soul querying era record yeah but it sold half as much as like water for chocolate nobody liked it no hip-hop heads liked it but you know the point being that i think a lot of artists paid attention to that record, you know, and said, okay, what he's done on like Water for Chocolate, what he's done on Electric Circus. I can use this.
You know, when you think about artists like Lupe Fiasco, when you think about the whole Chicago crew of Jamila Woods, Chance the Rapper, Rhymefest, Vic Mensa, No Name, Mick Jenkins, Rick Wilson. all children of the Soulquarians era in the way they approach their music. When I think of Kendrick Lamar... You know, to pimp a butterfly. Can you imagine to pimp a butterfly without D'Angelo's voodoo or like water for chocolate by common? And as we've said many times, you know.
There's no Drake without Kanye's 808s and heartbreak. There's no 808s and heartbreak and the experimentation of Kanye at his best without Common. You know, is there a Chicago sound? To some extent, going back to Dusty's, you know, I mean, Common says the revolution won't be televised. The revolution is here at one point, shouting back to Last Poets and Gil Scott Heron. Right. That love of those.
records that your parents bought and forgot and you rediscovered dusty soul that's part of it but also the ethos all those chicago artists you just mentioned um are to various extents Positive feminist educators, right? There is an idea here. We will not... tear down the black community we may tell stories about the realities of the street certainly chance the rapper has certainly you know rhyme fest has common always has as well but there is an uplift to the music that says
Right. And we demand respect and we respect ourselves. And also a reflection of that community saying we are more than one thing. Yes. More than how we are portrayed in the mass media. We are this broad. multi-culti, you know, community that is far more interesting and far more in-depth than what we are portrayed as. I think of a story like, you know, Payback is a grandmother.
Right. Some thugs rob Common's grandmother. And he's going to go and he kills them. I mean, that is as tough as any gangster rap fantasy of violence. But there were also laughs along the way. And kind of the conclusion is the song is I probably didn't have to do that because grandma could have taken care of them better. Yeah, right.
Greg, we didn't mention the title, and it's so obvious and such an important part of this record. Like Water for Chocolate. Brilliant 1989 Laura Esquivel novel, right? Set in Mexico. Made into a movie in 92. What does it mean, like water for chocolate, in many Latin American countries? hot chocolate is made with water rather than milk, right? It's the love of the mother or the grandmother making hot chocolate for their kid. And at the time, not to either of us, but Common said,
I felt like I was doing the same thing. Instead of making hot chocolate, I was, quote, putting all my heart, my mind, and my rawness into these tracks. So that I hope people can feel that when they listen to the album. Like a great Mexican meal. You know, the love. It comes out in every bite. And that's how I feel about this album. That wraps up our classic album dissection of Like Water for Chocolate. And now we want to hear from you. Share your thoughts via voice message on our website.
soundopinions.org, or in our Patreon group, like these listeners did. New messages. Hi guys, I just wanted to say thank you for the remembrance of and the replay of the interview with David Johansson. What a talent, what a loss. I can't say it's the end of an era because I guess that year ended a long time ago, but I do feel special poignancy when you lose the last member.
of a band like that. I feel like it did when Tommy Ramone died. This just leaves an extra void. On the positive side though, left a lot of great music behind. I think there's no question that Dahl's first album is, at least for me, top ten albums of all time, maybe top five. Hey, Jim and Greg, this is Chris calling from Brooklyn. Calling to tell you about a band I've really been enjoying in 2025 so far. They're called Delivery. They're from Australia.
Their new album is called Force Majore. This is an incredible rock album. It really straddles the line between melodic rock and post-punk. Half the songs on the album are led by a male vocalist, half by a female vocalist. who is kind of doing the same monotone style as English teacher or dry cleaning. The riffs are great. It's very accessible. A lot of fun. Anyways, hope you check them out. Really think you would dig them. Take care.
No more messages. Thanks again to our listeners. We love hearing from them. Mr. Cott, what is on the show next week? Next week, Jim, we've got a big record review roundup. We're overdue to catch up with some of these records. Lucy Dacus has a new one, Perfume Genius, a bunch of others. And don't forget to check out our bonus podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts. And join us on Patreon for our Monday podcast.
everything else. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this program belong solely to sound opinions and not necessarily to Columbia College Chicago or our sponsors. Thanks as always to our Patreon supporters. Sound Opinions is produced by Alex Claiborne, Andrew Gill, and Max Hatlam. Our business development manager is Gary Yonker. Our Columbia College intern is Joe Pennington. And our social media consultant is Katie Kopp.