PART ONE
“We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. As Arnold Toynbee says: ‘Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore, the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word.’ ”
—Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.
—Frederick Douglass
* * *
I was standing in front of a full-length mirror, in the middle of a fashion designer’s studio in Beverly Hills. It was hot outside, the clear blue sky was hazy, and the sun warmed the concrete. My truck was parked along the curb, and I was thinking about a peaceful, quiet drive. In the meantime, I looked at myself in the mirror.
Kendrick’s new album DAMN. was on shuffle, and I bobbed my head while my assistant, Aun, sat next to my charging phone, checking her own phone and answering emails, answering texts, cleaning up the calendar, all for the sake of me. I was the center of this work, and—I kept looking at myself.
I knew who I saw when I saw the face staring back at me—it had been more or less the same face for forty-plus years now—yet I thought: Who is that? Is that me? Someone asked me a question about a jacket, and I shook my head. “Nah,” I said.
I could hear Micaela, my stylist, sighing. She was there on the laptop, or I should say in my laptop, propped up on a chair; she watched my fitting from her remote location via FaceTime. I asked her where she was at, and she named the city, said she was working and visiting friends, and I told her I had just been out there myself, and I couldn’t wait to get back.
I am blessed with this opportunity of mine to move about the world . . . it is vital, and it has only increased as time goes by. From vans and buses, touring around the country, doing campus shows back in the early 1990s, to now, present day, flying across the country and around the world.
At the time of this fitting, I was in Los Angeles, my home away from Chicago, and the fitting was for a benefit concert I’d been asked to do. There was a red-carpet appearance scheduled prior to the show.
“Try this on.” I slipped my arms through a dark-brown jacket, this one more my taste. I jerked my shoulders up and down. “Feels a little snug but it looks dope,” I said, staring at my reflection again. I turned to the left, then to the right; I checked to see where the jacket ended—at my hips, almost a perfect fit. “I think that one,” Micaela said through the laptop, “but we have another one in green. Let’s try that one. And let’s swap out the shoes for the all-white sneakers.”
And like that, the stylist’s assistants buzzed around me with swift movements. I stood there in front of the mirror, and asked Aun what time it was. “Just before two,” she said, looking up from her phone. She reminded me about the meetings I had later in the day. Meetings. I was to sit down with a director who was shooting a film I wanted in on, and I had a call with a cop from a city police department who was helping me prepare for another possible role, a homicide detective.
Then I had scripts to read, and phone calls to return. I wanted to get to the recording studio later, but the possibility seemed more remote by the minute—hence the desire to go for a drive. At least there, in my truck, I could rap to myself over some instrumentals, or to no music at all. Rapping to myself without purpose, only because I loved to do it.
Speaking of love, I’ve been rapping for more than twenty-five years now. I would rap for free. I would rap if I lived on the streets. I would rap if I was a preacher, a prisoner, or a politician. I was paid $5,000 for my first album, Can I Borrow a Dollar?—an amount that was split among three people. The label got us for the cheap, no doubt, but I was grateful at the time to be paid anything for something I loved to do and would have done no matter the cost.
That I’ve since received more money for rapping speaks to perseverance, I suppose, or market forces. Rapping is my release, my art, my way of expression. It’s a desire that comes from my spirit, and whenever I can appease the desire to rap, I do. And if I can’t do it in a studio, then I’ll go for a drive, alone, and do it there, happily and at peace.
The fitting went on for a little while longer. I tried on a couple more outfits, made my choices, which Micaela approved with a thumbs-up from the laptop, and said my goodbyes and thanks to the staff as Aun and I departed. After trying on the fresh clothes, I felt dressed down when I was back in my T-shirt and basketball shorts, my usual outfit when I work out at the gym with my trainer; I often get along with him, but at the time, he and I were having a slight disagreement. It was about politics, something involving the president, barely six months into his first term, who had everyone on edge, it seemed, prepared for disaster. After Barack Obama, the world felt uncertain and unstable, unpredictable, and dark.
When Aun and I stepped outside, the Southern California heat assaulted us. “Damn,” I said, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand. Aun and I were walking down the sidewalk, hardly a few yards from my stylist’s building, when someone shouted me out. “Are you Common?”
I didn’t even see him until he said my name, a slim white dude wearing shorts and a red shirt; the shirt matched his Nike trainers, and the hatchback he pointed to when he said, “I was just parking my car and I saw you step out and I was like, ‘Yo, is that Common?’ Your music changed my life, and it blessed my life, too.” He told me his name, and I shook his hand. He said he was a yoga teacher, and a personal trainer. “I trained Kobe,” he said. I had no idea if that was true or if he was just running a hustle; in either case, he gave me his business card. “I’d love to train with you,” he said. I said, “Cool,” then thanked him for the card as I climbed into my truck, started the ignition, and peeled out. I started the day staring at myself in the mirror; likewise, this memoir is a reflection of me as I examine myself and consider love from its beautiful dimensions.
Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.
—Zora Neale Hurston
* * *
My name is Rashid, and I do not necessarily know more about love than you do. The emotion feels elusive, as well as the knowledge, the understanding—the meaning, in other words. Why do I love? Why do I bother? I suppose, in thinking about it, there is something human in the desire to love and to be loved; those things are treated as separate desires, wants, but maybe they are the same coin. It is love, on both sides—you and I, he and she, they and them—that adds dimensions to the emotion. It reflects from all angles the various temperatures and viewpoints of love, and no matter how one might feel in the moment, and this I can relate to personally, there is no one true story.
In the midst of a new breakup, or some years after a past one, there is, I think, a habit to reconsider all that happened between two people, to see if your role in it was as bad as you really perceive it, in the hopes of perhaps forgiving yourself. This doesn’t mean you necessarily did anything wrong or hurtful to the other person. On the contrary, sometimes relationships simply end, without blame, without guilty parties. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, in the end, there is always someone who is at fault. Is that me? Was that the case when such-and-such relationship with so-and-so deteriorated after so many hopes, visions, fantasies, of a shared life?