Common has revisited a time where Michael Jordan gave a scathing analysis of his basketball abilities after he played in the 2010 NBA All-Star Celebrity game.
While speaking to Men’s Health recently, the Grammy Award-winning rapper started by sharing how he was already a tad bit acquainted with the Chicago Bulls legend because he was a ball-boy for the NBA team.
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Common then spoke about how Michael Jordan saw him perform at the House of Blues once before delving into the story about him critiquing his hoops skills.
““I just played in the [2010] celebrity game and hit the last free throws to seal the game,” he said. “In this picture, when I greeted him, he told me to stick to rapping. He grounded me in this picture, for sure.”
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Afterwards, the 51-year-old artist said that he pursued rapping after getting injured playing basketball during his junior year of high school.
Check out the interview below:
In the same conversation, the Chicago native reflected on Hip Hop’s arduous journey and the role Nas played in bringing it to where it is today.
“I remember being at a performance and then walking outside of the show, and this dude came up to me, and he said, ‘Common, I really love your music. I want to tell you that your song “Retrospect for Life” made me decide to have my kid,’” he began, illustrating the importance of writing songs that people can connect with.
“I wrote that song because I had been through that experience,” he continued. “And there was a moment when I was on the way to the abortion clinic, and the mother of my child decided, ‘We can’t do this again,’ because this was after already having one abortion. Let’s figure out whatever we have to do. That situation showed when you receive experiences from a place of truth, it just resonates in a different way.”
He then circled back to his peers who helped move the culture forward, saying: “That’s why we related to when Nas talked about what he talked about on Illmatic. He experienced it, and the way he told it was just beautiful. In ‘One Love,’ he talks to his boy in prison. That’s one of the greatest songs ever written.”
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This isn’t the first time the “Go” MC has credited Nas with changing his outlook.
While speaking to the Bridge Podcast last year, Common said of God’s Son: “His mentality was on a whole other level, so it just made me start thinking on a different level. Illmatic is one of those things, it was like, okay — and I was probably 20, 21 — that was like life changing for me.”
