Common

With the Grammys coming and going yesterday, the great debate over who would win versus who deserved to win had gotten us all worked up at XXL headquarters. And with good kid, m.A.A.d city—an album we bestowed with a XXL rating—missing out on grabbing any awards, the voices saying "Kendrick got robbed!" were growing. With that ...

That's right folks. The hottest comedian, Dave Chappelle, and the hottest magazine, have joined forces. Eat your heart out, bitches. In the Fall of 1999, while driving down 8th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, I bumped into Talib Kweli. Afte...

With almost 20 years in the game, Common has carved out a unique niche for himself: the MC's MC whose stardom has eclipsed his music. Words: Ben Detrick Photos: Steven Taylor ON A SUNNY OCTOBER DAY, COMMON ROLLS UP TO CHICAGO’S WEST LOOP ATHLETIC CLUB TO SHOOT HOOPS. HE L...

News broke today that Common's upcoming album, titled Nobody Smiling, will be produced entirely by No I.D., and it didn't take long for the duo to unveil their first collaboration from the project. The track tackles "Chiraq," the new stylization of Chicago that compares the violence-riddled city to war-torn Iraq, and at one point lifts the Mobb Deep line, "There's a war going on out

Common has been gearing up for a busy year, announcing in September that he'd be working on an EP and an album in 2014. In a recent interview with Revolt TV, it looks like that EP may have morphed into a full-on album, as Common's studio sessions with No I...

"I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means." Kanye West said those words in an interview with the New York Times back in June and he's been hammering this point home in almost every press appearance since then...

Winter is coming... As the weather slowly chills and the crushing inevitability of winter snow becomes imminent, our minds drift to warm summer breezes and the soft touch of white sand between our toes. With the city sure to freeze, it might be time to escape it all and go on vacation...

On this day, Oct. 25, in hip-hop history, Common dropped his sophomore LP Resurrection.'

As the BET Cyphers last week proved, there's something special about watching a rapper just spit. Though the cyphers only come once a year, there are still places out there that force rappers to deliver verses over a beat in a live setting...

During his headline-making interview with Jimmy Kimmel two weeks ago, Kanye West touched on the growing problem of gang violence in his hometown of Chicago. Fellow Chi-Town rapper Common was approached by TMZ on the street  in New York City this week where he was asked about Kanye's comments. Com ...

As a species, there are few of us that have been blessed with the special genetic cocktail that seems to stem the tide of aging over our bodies. If you are one of those few that hit the genetic lottery, you seem to forever seem as if you are twenty-two years old...