Hip-Hop Artist Common Might Have Been a Seattleite

Photo: Eyton Z/Flickr

His last chance came with a tryout for the Seattle SuperSonics. They knew about my dad’s past troubles, and they were concerned. They wanted to know he was a family man. Problem was, my folks were separated, heading toward divorce. So, early one morning, my father packed everything he owned into the back seat of a rented Dodge Charger and drove to Eighty-eighth and Dorchester in Chicago’s South Side, where my mother and I lived. Here is where my parents’ stories diverge. “He took us out of the house at gunpoint, handcuffed me to the front seat, put you in the back, and started driving across the country to Seattle,” my mother says.

—Hip-hop artist Common, writing about his father in the new memoir One Day It’ll All Make Sense