immortilized by the realness i bring to it

if revolution had a movie i'd be theme music

my music, you either fight, fuck, or dream to it

my life is one big rhyme, i try to scheme through it

through my shell, never knew what the divine would bring to it

i'd be lying if i said i didn't want millions

more than money saved, i wanna save children

dealing with alcoholism and afrocentricity

a complex man drawn off of simplicity

reality is frisking me

this industry will make you lose intensity

the common sense in me remembers the basement

i'm morpheus in this hip-hop matrix, exposing fake shit

-the 6th sense-



has common sold out? his song with erykah badu was hot, got him some face time on all important mtv. then his next video with mary j blige seemed a bit generic. nice concept perhaps but not exactly "common-esque," if i can say such a thing. and now, now he's in a commercial with mya selling coke. the coke ad is part of the new "coca-cola...real" campaign and i suppose by using common, coke gets some credibility. but what does that mean for our man common, one of the greatest MCs of our time? i don't know.



i suppose he gets paid, which is nice. he gets some fame, which is nice. he gets his music spread to more people, people who may have never heard of him before. he may lose some underground credibility but does that matter in the long run? my first reaction upon hearing common and coke in the same sentence was "whut?!?" but then i thought about it, he's not selling out, he's just trying to make some dollars. which is never wrong. popularity isn't necessarily bad so trying to be popular and mainstream isn't necessarily bad either. common can still make great music even if his name is everywhere and his face is recognizable by TRL fans worldwide. if the money makes him a better artist, then i'm all for it. people need to get paid and if one of my favorite artists needs money, then i'm all for him on coke commercials, lunch boxes and super sized billboards.



what's pop, what's commercial, it shouldn't really be an identifier of what is quality in our cultural landscape. sometimes one can get too highbrow and dismiss the tastes of the common man. but i try not to do this too much. although with movies, it's getting kind of hard and i tend to dismiss crap with relish. with music however, good stuff is good stuff, whether it moves one million or one thousand units. so listen hard and support your favorite artists, even if you're too poor to actually buy the album and need to download it. not that i do that.