Common
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Last summer, when Common released Be (GOOD/Geffen), I wrote in my blog that the album was causing a communal feminist boner across the land–his dynamic, self-actualized version of masculinity was something unseen in popular hip-hop, where Young Jeezy saying “I’m so emotional / I love my Glock” passes for soul-searching. In the Twin Cities City Pages I even wrote that one of the disc’s better singles, “Faithful”–basically an extended metaphor comparing monogamy to religious faith–“conflates liberation theology and adult male reckoning.” Be affirmed the possibility of introspection, reconciliation, and self-awareness in hip-hop, even more so than Common’s previous albums–suddenly he was playing Paul to Kanye’s Jesus, comporting himself like a fresh convert eager to show the world the new man he’d become. It gave me hope that hip-hop still contained the seeds of its own salvation, and that the whole genre wasn’t necessarily going to degenerate into an every-man-for-himself apocalypse of late-stage capitalism and unrepentant machismo.
For all his sweet rhymes and all the serious questions he asks himself–what does it mean to be a man, what does it mean to be a rapper–Common lost me as soon as he pulled a woman out of the crowd to use as a prop. At hip-hop shows it’s fairly standard to get some ladies up onstage for a bit of mutual grinding, but Common’s stunt–while a lot tamer in some ways–was also way more fucked-up. It’s one thing for a performer to flirt with a stranger, to dance close with her and serenade her–she’s Everygirl, standing in for the One, and maybe she’ll even enjoy the role. But it’s another thing entirely to then set her on a stool and act like you’re about to finger her in front of 1,300 paid admissions, stopping your cupped hand two or three inches from her pussy while she looks embarrassed and stares at the ground. Hell, if you’ve gone that far, you might as well stand her up, turn her around, and pretend-hump her from behind while your DJ plays R. Kelly’s “Bump n’ Grind.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Newberry.
