Common is hard at work on his Pete Rock-produced album, and it has him in a great creative space. The Chicago native first announced the project last September, revealing that the effort is inspired by "Brand Nubian, A Tribe Called Quest, or De La Soul, because they just got their music on streaming, it's been inspiring to hear."
While appearing on Late Night with Seth Meyers to promote his new book And Then We Rise on Monday (January 22), he provided an update. "I'm working on a new album with the legendary Pete Rock as the producer and man I'm so enthused and inspired about this project," Common gushed. "And Seth, I'm already plugging and saying, can I come back and perform some of this music?"
Common then shared the clip to his Instagram page to reiterate his sentiments, followed by a photo of him and Pete in the lab that he captioned, "We are Cooking."
Pete Rock is equally as excited about the joint effort. Shortly after it was announced in the fall, the legendary producer shared HipHopDX's story about it to emphasize how special he thinks it is going to be. "You ever miss that feeling of a good release in hip hop?" he captioned. "Remember how exciting that felt??? We both excited as a mafugga. I always feel like I got something to prove but its just fun to me to make music."
Common and Pete Rock have worked together several times in the past, including "Verbal Murder 2" and the seminal Ice Cube diss "The Bitch In Yoo."
Nas Surprises DJ Premier With Album News In Behind-The-Scenes Studio Footage
Nas and DJ Premier are finally set to release an album together, but the news appeared to catch the legendary producer off guard. The longtime collaborators uploaded behind-the-scenes footage on Tuesday documenting the making of their new single "Define My Name," which serves as the first offering from their upcoming joint project.
In the clip, Premo asks Nas: "So you about to drop another album?" referencing his prolific run with Hit-Boy. Nas answers: "With Premier," surprising the producer who enthusiastically replies: "Oh, okay!"
The duo announced their currently-untitled joint album last week with "Define My Name," conveniently released on the 30th anniversary of Nas' Illmatic. The song ends with Nas saying: "I got the rhymes, you got the beats... 30 years later we back in the streets, we back in the lab... It's album time."
The collaborative album has been long teased, with Nas first discussing it in a 2006 Scratch magazine interview. "We talked about doing an album together and some of the listeners want to rush the shit — I wanna rush it, too — but I just want to pull pieces from all kinds of different people for this next puzzle because a lot of people think shit got easy, that I quit."
Nas and Premo's partnership dates back to Illmatic, with Premier producing "N.Y. State of Mind," "Represent" and "Memory Lane." Following other collabs like "I Gave You Power," they reunited in 2022 for "Beat Breaks."
Nas recently announced a UK/European tour celebrating Illmatic's 30th anniversary, including shows in London, Manchester and more.