A Quote by Common
Technically, my first acting job was in one of my videos for a song called 'Retrospect For Life,' which Lauryn Hill directed and featured an actress by the name of N'bushe Wright, who played my girlfriend who was about to be pregnant. I remember being so nervous about it, but now I feel like I can conquer the world with it.
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I definitely listened to Lauryn Hill - her's was like the first album I bought myself. Brandy's Never Say Never and Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill were always in rotation for a couple of years.
I feel like the albums I grew up listening to - for example, Eminem, Lauryn Hill, Christina Aguilera - they all spoke about real stuff that was happening in their life and everyone else's life.
Everyone has their own experiences with song. It means one thing to me and it means something entirely different to somebody else. I have a song called 'Apple Cherry' which is a song about unrequited love and to this couple in London, they fell in love to this song. The girl in the relationship called me and said she wanted to propose to her girlfriend could you sing 'Apple Cherry' while I do it? I was like 'Really? That's not a love song about getting together'.
The first song that I remember writing in its entirety was when I was 9 years old. I wrote it on a bus, on a field trip. It was called 'Mystery Man,' and in retrospect, it was the beginning of my exploration of what it was like to have a man in your life, because I didn't.
My first big break came with Lauryn Hill on a track called Everything is Everything, I played piano on that track way back in 1998.
My first acting job - I used to do commercials, and I had done a couple music videos - but my first job job was 'ATL' with T.I. I auditioned for that, like, five times. I didn't have an agent. And then, from there, my life changed.
I feel like everybody that saw my videos was like, 'Oh this dude's about to rap.' They just played my videos, and I feel like I shocked a lot of people.
I remember writing a song when I was about 15. This is the one I can remember. I know I'd been writing poetry for a long time, since I was about eight, but I remember my first one that I put to chords. I was really trying to be like the psychedelic era Beatles, I was obsessed. All I could think about was Beatles and Hendrix. So I tried to write a psychedelic song, and it was the worst. I couldn't even... If I read it now - I still have the book somewhere - it makes me cringe out loud. It was just about psychedelic stuff.
I'd like to sing you a song now about my old girlfriend. It's called "They'll Find Her When the Leaves Blow Away 'Cause I'm Not Raking 'Til Spring."
When I look back on my life nowadays, which I sometimes do, what strikes me most forcibly about it is that what seemed at the time most significant and seductive, seems now most futile and absurd. For instance, success in all of its various guises; being known and being praised; ostensible pleasures, like acquiring money or seducing women, or traveling, going to and fro in the world and up and down in it like Satan, exploring and experiencing whatever Vanity Fair has to offer. In retrospect all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called “licking the earth.
I remember my first standup act when I was seventeen; I did a really lame song about being flat chested. I was doing it in New York, and I remember Kevin Brennan, the guy I lost my virginity to, was like "That song doesn't make sense, you have tits."
You look back at a time you idealize now and you only remember the good stuff. You tell the stories about the hard stuff and just laugh about it now. You don't remember how difficult it was to be stranded in Austin after driving 52 hours from Seattle in a rainstorm and having nowhere to stay for five hours. You remember that stuff and laugh about it now. You don't feel it the way you did back then when you were so scared and nervous and tired and hungry. We always idealize the past because we don't feel the painful stuff the way we used to.
The interesting thing about a song like 'Bulletproof Heart' - it was [originally] called 'Trans Am' - the interesting thing about the amalgamation of that song was that the song also lived within us, like we all got to live with the song and it was around for about a year before we recorded it again, so the song got to really transform, which you don't really get to do.
I remember telling people I booked this job; they were like, 'What is it called?' I was like, 'Peaky Blinders,' and they were like, 'What?' It sounds ridiculous, but I like it because there's an instant intrigue about the name.
There are certain times in a concert when I'll call an audible because I feel like God is calling me to play a different song. But truthfully, I feel called to play for the church whether it's song being played on Christian radio or it's concerts I'm doing primarily in churches.
I never used to watch horror films because I was a nervous type. I believed all the publicity about The Exorcist when it was released - you know, all that nonsense about people fainting in the cinema - and decided it would definitely freak me out. I particularly remember my girlfriend telling me about Suspiria - ironic considering my first ever film work was with Argento - and how scary it was.
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