SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST
stars fly discount airlines and eat tortilla chips too
I flew down to Los Angeles today to do an interview with Common. This is for a cover story that will appear in URB later in early summer. I'll get to Common in a moment but first...
I took Southwest down and while I was boarding the plane, I notice there was an empty aisle seat. So I take the seat and as I'm putting my bags on the floor, I look over and it's Taye Diggs.
At first, I'm thinking, "damn, this dude looks like Taye Diggs." And then I stare a bit harder and realize, "no, this is definitely Taye Diggs," and that thought was immediately followed by, "what is Taye Diggs doing on a Southwest flight?" Not like he's got Clooney-Pitt private jet loot or anything but when I mentioned this story to others today, their first reaction was the same as mine.
I did manage to avoid playing myself by not asking the requisite, "um, are you Taye Diggs?" question though I was mightily tempted since I thought it was funny that I'd be flying to interview Common and the last film I saw with Diggs in it was Brown Sugar which is basically the cinematic version of "I Used to Love H.E.R."
Down in L.A., I met up with Common at a slightly swanky Mexican restaurant on Beverly (where the chips and salsa were remarkably good). I remembered that the last time I interviewed Common, it was at City Crab in Manhattan, back in 1999. I don't know if Common just likes to do his interviews in restaurants but I wouldn't have minded so much if it wasn't for the fact that this place was playing bad pop music on its house system.
I had forgotten how good of an interview Common is. He's not as sound-bite friendly as say, Mos Def - Common has a habit of speaking in generalities such as, "if I feel a song, I just feel it" but whatever he lacks in precision articulation, he makes up with in sincerity. Most writers aspire to have their interviews feel more like conversations and that's what talking to Common is like: it's like talking to him.
I won't get into the nitty gritty of the interview (read my story when I drop it) but here's a few quick questions I asked at the end for a sidebar.
Name your three favorite songs from your own career:
1) "I Used to Love H.E.R." (no surprise there)
2) "The Bitch In Yoo" (definitely surprise there)
3) "The Light" (again, not surprising)
Name two songs by other artists you wish you had written:
1) Nas: "NY State of Mind" My first reaction was, "you're picking a song called 'New York State of Mind'? and he laughed and said, "well, I would have called it 'Chicago State of Mind.'" Great choice though - this is my favorite Nas song as well.
2) Big Daddy Kane: "Raw" This took him a long, long time to come up with. He threw out some initial feelers including "Passin' Me By," "My Philosophy," "Lost Ones," "Once Upon a Time In the Projects," but finally settled on "Raw."
<< Home