Common

Hip-Hop Artist, Activist

Lonnie Rashid Lynn, Jr., also known as Common, is an Academy Award Winning artist, actor, author, activist, and son of a teacher and former basketball pro from Chicago. Anything but common, he set himself apart as an artist dedicated to spreading a positive message. His debut album, Can I Borrow A Dollar?, with its spoken-word-type lyricism, pioneered a new, socially-engaged genre of hip-hop in 1992. A Grammy Award winner, Common also acts on the big screen with roles in projects like Just Wright, The Odd Life of Timothy Green, and Selma. For Selma, he and vocalist/musician, John Legend, won a Golden Globe and an Oscar for the song “Glory.” In 2006, he started the Common Ground Foundation. In 2011, Common released a memoir entitled One Day It’ll All Make Sense about the influence of his relationship with his mother and a second memoir in 2019, Let Love Have the Last Word: A Memoir.