When I said this line, at a certain point, I started realizing that we all are embracing that we are Americans. Black Americans. Puerto Ricans that’ve been born here. Americans. Chinese American.

But for me it was like as a Black American understanding we are part of this country. We helped build this country. We are citizens and part of the fabric of this country. So the equality and justice we talk about, the only way that the country will see is equality and justice is by giving it to Black people too.

We’re going to do our best to take it but it got to be a joint effort to a certain degree of us working together. I brought that lyric up, the same constitution and statements that you make in all these phrases that are for America, understand that the black people have to be considered in the words.

Don’t forget we are human beings and American citizens and children of God and we are here.

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This is really important because if you look at a lot of the movies that deal with the future and saving the world and who saves the world, you don’t see a lot of Black characters that are the protagonist or the hero.

They may be the sidekick… but ultimately, you see one character, one person of color, in those films and one Black person and they’ve reached their quota and that’s what I was referring to.

It used to be that we got one Black guy and one Black woman.

We’re changing that though. That’s why this song, for me this song is a call to action

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Obviously I’m talking about when Lincoln freed the slaves but I’m also talking about was that truly the freedom or was I free when I got this Cadillac. This car, is that freedom to me?

I started getting into the dynamics of what I think freedom is for us. Did Lincoln really free me? Was my mind free? What was that freedom? Was that really free for us? Or is it the Cadillac?

Or is it drinking? Which sometimes for me, I feel freedom drinking. Or battle raps? Which is another expression of freedom.

Or is it God speed that we travel at? The last part of that is because we are on god level, that’s the real freedom.

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We salute MC Lyte here, this is her lyric from “10% Dis.”

This was actually the first verse initially. That’s what I first wrote. So that MC Lyte thing is the first thing that popped in my head when I thought about writing “Black America Again."

MC Lyte and came in and did a little adlib under there. That’s actually Lyte’s voice under there.

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Ava Duvernay is a Black woman director who did ‘Selma.’ She’s about to do a movie called “A Wrinkle in Time,” which is a Disney movie, one of the biggest budget movies that any Black woman definitely has ever had. She did this movie called, “This is Life” which was a documentary on hip-hop. She’s a visionary for Blackness.

She tells us our stories and tells the diversity of who we are and shoots us in beautiful ways and it’s not just the typical story that you see Black characters in so that’s why I was like we need visionaries like her.

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the greatest writers we have of our time. I had to give it up for him because his book, “Between the World and Me” got me in the mind space as a writer to get back to writing.

Cory Booker is a politician that is standing up for the people.

And I got on that whole thing about the foods because, one day at this birthday dinner I was having and me, Kanye West and the chef I work with, Lauren Von der Pool, and we were all talking and she brought up how the food we eat is affecting us.

She was like, “The foods we eating is affecting these kids. All the sugar.” And obviously you kind of know it but we were breaking it down and we were connecting it to how that can even contribute to even the behavior of the kids in the city.

That’s why I got on that. Plus I look through our cities and I see a lot of us are obese because the foods in our neighborhoods are not good, healthier foods. Access to good healthier foods. So I covered the whole spectrum on this song. I couldn't’ help it.

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It always bothered me when I saw Serena— point blank she’s the best tennis player. She’s the best tennis player and one of the greatest athletes ever, right?

So, the fact that Maria Sharapova was even in the conversations at the time and was making as much money.

Things have shifted now because Maria got suspended, but the fact that was even in the conversation, Maria Sharapova didn’t even have as close to as many grand slams as Serena does.

And to me I use that as an example to show the imbalance. it’s not just Serena. It’s athletes, entertainers that don’t get the same opportunities, don’t get the same pay and even from a perspective of women but that wasn’t exactly what I was talking about. It’s just the inequality in that.

That’s why I say that Serena lyric and you seen what Viola Davis said. She was like, “Look man these are some of the only things we’ve been offered."

Viola Davis was speaking on it and I just supported it.

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As a Black man that cares about Black people— and being from Chicago— I feel like it’s my duty to speak to us and say, “Hey, what can we do to stop the killing?”

We got to take care of ours and I was thinking that the people who listen to my music or didn’t even know Common that much, just still know this is coming from a place, ‘cause he care.

When you hear a lot of politicians saying that, they just saying it like it’s part of their political ploy. They’re just saying it. And some of it is just saying it in an ignorant way. “Well Black people killing each other so why shouldn’t the police?”

That’s the one of the most ignorant alignment of thoughts. When you saying they killing each other so the police should be able to kill them. No.

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I brought up Black Lives Matter, and initially I said, “Do they matter to us” because I was really like we got to do better to ourselves and I still feel that way but my thoughts have evolved, the song has evolved to the point where it was like, “Nah. Y'all folks out there talking about all black people killing each other so why should we stop?"

I had to make a statement to them at that point. The picture became bigger. And it was like I already said what I needed to say, we kill each other as part of the plot.

The battle with us, Black Lives Matter and they matter to us, that lyric evolved.

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To raffle black bodies, shows the devalue that they have for black life. Then I got next to the slave blocks, the blocks that we now become slaves too.

We succumb ourselves the oppression that has history on us and pushed into it, now we’ve become victims to that and now are bestowing it upon other people in our community. We bestowing it upon each other.

When you scrapping for food, don’t have jobs and education and drugs and guns, it’s natural to be in that wild life and we just start acting like that’s the way of life. And that’s how we become slaves to the blocks. But that ain’t really our natural order. That ain’t us by nature.

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This is obviously talking about how, white men and came and conquered this land and they just fought the Indians to take the land and then put the same type of destruction onto the Black family.

And splitting people from their mothers and their fathers and their children and their cousins and uncles and aunts. That’s a tough thing to be raffled on a slave block, right? So I’m going through that and I want you to feel the history of that when I’m saying it.

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