Rapper Common appeared on Good Morning America today discussing his new memoir Let Love Have the Last Word with Robin Roberts. Covering topics such as dealing with his daughter revealing to him he was too busy working to be there for her to being molested as a child and how Michelle Obama helped him get through personal struggles of his.
Being a parent and hearing you’re not doing as good of a job as you thought you might have been can be crushing. Equally difficult is realizing the need to be right about history isn’t as important as being receptive to your child’s feelings.
“I believe that I was doing a good job, right? And when she told me those things, it kinda shook me, because at first I was defensive, I was getting angry at some of the things she was saying,” he said. “But then, that really sparked the book in many ways because I was like, man, what’s the best way for me to love her right now?” At that point he said all there was for him to do was “to listen and hear her perspective, because no matter what I feel and what I think I did, she’s telling me her side of things and that’s what she feels.”
And since writing his book, he says about his daughter that’s now 22, “our relationship has been able to grow,” which is a good thing because many children carry that type of hurt far into adulthood. It’s good to see they were able to salvage and move forward with their relationship.
During the interview, Common revealed he was molested as a child and expressed how he was torn as to whether he should mention it in his book. “It was something that I didn’t know if I wanted to talk about,” he said. “But I really believe that in telling my story, other people will be OK with talking about that situation.” He expressed the stigma of sexual assault not only in the black community but among black men saying, “we don’t talk about those issues in ways that we could,” he said. “So I felt I wanted to create a space for people who have experienced that to be able to share that. That’s part of the healing, to be honest. No sooner than I told the story, one of my good friends came out and told me it had happened to him.”
And just as with anything else, he said he had to learn to forgive. We all know the saying about how hurt people hurt people. The same goes with sexual abuse and how forgiveness is important to moving on with one’s life.”It’s still a process for me, in certain ways,” he said. “But I have to look at my life and know that, man, that’s somebody else’s pain that they kinda distributed to me. And I don’t wanna carry that, so let me figure out how it is affecting me and approach it head on, deal with it, and let it go.” The person he was able to turn to for a shoulder while working out what he was dealing with was fellow Chicagoan and First Lady, Michelle Obama.
“Michelle Obama, she has definitely helped talk me through just certain moments of relationships,” he said about the former first lady and social icon. “We had conversations and she has given me a lot of wisdom. One great thing that she told me as I was going through this journey was that you have to understand, you’re not gonna get anybody that’s perfect because you’re not perfect. So understand that there’s some certain things that you will compromise in choosing that partner. But as long as the core values, that are most important to you, that person, you know, marks off on that list, then you’re good.”
He finished the interview with freestyle. “I got into an abyss. I got into a bliss and then I thought about the girl that I should kiss,” he rapped. “And think at first, I need to mess with this, and that’s my heart. I took my part, so Robin, you are smart, so you know what we do. We let love spark, the whole situation, it all occurred. So now, I’m here to let love happen, last word.”
His new memoir Let Love Have the Last Word is out now. If you’re interested in seeing him in person, he’ll be in Washington, DC at The Kennedy Center May 13th and back in Chicago the 17th at Trinity United Church of Christ and in Atlanta at the The dReam Center on the 19th.
