Today in Hip-Hop — October 4: Common’s Resurrection Turns 32

October 4, 1994. Common — still going by Common Sense back then — drops his sophomore album Resurrection out of Chicago, built almost entirely with a then-unknown producer named No I.D. on the boards. Buried in the tracklist: “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” the extended metaphor record that turns hip-hop itself into a woman you fell for, watched change, and never stopped loving. Still ranked among the greatest rap songs ever cut. It also started a beef that nearly boiled over coast to coast.

Resurrection didn’t move units when it dropped — it’s the jazz-rap classic nobody bought on time. No I.D. flipped George Benson’s “The Changing World” for the “H.E.R.” beat, Battery Studios in Chicago did the rest, and the record quietly became the blueprint for everything “conscious rap” would get boxed into for the next decade. No I.D. would go on to mentor a kid from the South Side named Kanye. That lineage starts here.

Here’s the part people forget: the metaphor got read as a diss. Some West Coast heads — including Ice Cube — heard “H.E.R.” as a shot at gangsta rap specifically, and Cube clapped back on Mack 10’s “Westside Slaughterhouse.” Common didn’t let it ride — he answered over a Pete Rock beat with “The Bitch in Yoo,” picking apart Cube’s catalog since AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted. Westside Connection fired once more on “Hoo-Bangin’ (WSCG Style),” and that was that until Louis Farrakhan brokered actual peace between them. Cube and Common have been close ever since — they even co-starred in Barbershop: The Next Cut together.

One more receipt: Resurrection got popular enough that a reggae band already using the name “Common Sense” sued him over it. He lost the first half of his own name defending a record about loving hip-hop too much to stay quiet about where it was headed.

Common — “One Day It’ll All Make Sense” Tee

We made a tee for the album Common dropped right after all that dust settled — under his new, shortened name, with a title that reads like he was still explaining himself. Fitting, for a guy who spent one whole record defending why he loved hip-hop enough to criticize it.

Shop Now

Also today in hip-hop:

• Paris — Guerrilla Funk (1994): Same exact release day as Resurrection, different coast entirely — Oakland’s Paris put out his Priority Records political-rap statement while Common was dropping his jazz-rap one. Two completely different answers to the same golden-age moment.
• Ultramagnetic MCs — Critical Beatdown turns 38: Ced-Gee and the late Paul C chopped James Brown and Melvin Bliss breaks on an SP-1200 and built a sampling blueprint Kool Keith rarely gets full credit for.
• Twista — The Day After turns 21: His first album without hometown producer The Legendary Traxster, stacked with Mariah Carey, Snoop Dogg, and R. Kelly features, debuted at #2 and went Gold inside two months.
• Russell Simmons, born 1957: Co-founded Def Jam with Rick Rubin and turned the culture into an industry before most labels believed hip-hop had legs.

Stay creative — The Custom Creative Team

Jon Jones