Common

Lonnie Rashid Lynn (born March 13, 1972), known by his stage name Common (formerly known as Common Sense), is an American rapper, actor, and activist from Chicago, Illinois. He has received three Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award. He signed with the independent label Relativity Records to release his debut studio album Can I Borrow a Dollar? (1992), and gained further critical acclaim with its follow-ups, Resurrection (1994) and One Day It’ll All Make Sense (1997). He maintained an underground following into the late 1990s, and achieved his first mainstream success through his work with the black music collective, Soulquarians.After attaining his first major label record deal, he released his fourth and fifth albums, Like Water for Chocolate (2000) and Electric Circus (2002) to continued acclaim despite modest commercial response. In 2003, he won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Song for his feature on Erykah Badu’s single “Love of My Life (An Ode to Hip-Hop)”. He signed with fellow Chicago rapper Kanye West’s GOOD Music to release his sixth album Be (2005), which was met with critical and commercial success, also receiving a Grammy Award nomination for Best Rap Album. His seventh album, Finding Forever (2007) saw further success and became his first to peak the Billboard 200, while a song from the album, “Southside” (featuring Kanye West) won Lynn’s second Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. He released his eighth album, Universal Mind Control (2008) to mixed critical reception before departing GOOD and launching his own label imprint, Think Common Entertainment in 2011. Through the label in a joint venture with Warner Records, he released The Dreamer/The Believer (2011); and through No I.D.’s ARTium Recordings, an imprint of Def Jam Recordings, he released Nobody’s Smiling (2014). Both albums were met with critical praise and further discussed social issues in Black America; his eleventh album, Black America Again (2016) saw widespread critical acclaim and served as his final release on a major label.Lynn won the Academy Award for Best Original Song for his song “Glory” (with John Legend), from Selma (2014) where he co-starred as civil rights leader James Bevel. He has also acted in film such as Smokin’ Aces (2006), Street Kings (2008), American Gangster (2007), Wanted (2008), Date Night (2010), Just Wright (2010), Happy Feet Two (2011), Run All Night (2015), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017), and Smallfoot (2018). In television, has also starred as Elam Ferguson in AMC western series Hell on Wheels from 2011 to 2014. He received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics for the song “Letter to the Free” for the Netflix documentary 13th (2017) directed by Ava DuVernay. He made his Broadway debut acting in the play Between Riverside and Crazy (2023).

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