The one thing Common regrets about his career: “I sometimes wish”
Common doesn’t like to linger on past mistakes. He prefers to live in the here and now, but, even so, there is one thing that, if he could, maybe he’d go back to change.
The most renowned albums of Common’s career are, arguably, 2005’s Be and its 2007 follow-up Finding Forever, both of which were Grammy-nominated. But that wasn’t the only thing that bound them.
A thread running through both albums, in addition to Common’s rapping, is that they were both produced, for the most part, by Kanye West, which is at the heart of Common’s big career regret. It’s not that he wishes Ye hadn’t produced those albums. To the contrary, he wishes he’d done one more.
Appearing on the Coda Collection’s Story to Tell series in 2021, Common spoke about his 2008 album Universal Mind Control, which came out immediately after his two Kanye-produced albums. While Ye was still involved in Universal Mind Control as an executive producer, he was certainly less hands-on than he had been on the previous two albums. The Neptunes took on most of the production duties this time.
Com had his regrets about that, as he admitted on Story to Tell. “If there’s anything that I sometimes wish,” he said, “I would have did a third one with Kanye.”
Common insisted that, ordinarily, he doesn’t hold onto regrets. But, when it comes to this one, it’s just a thought he can’t quite shake.
Universal Mind Control received a mixed bag of reviews, but, if anything, it veered towards a negative reception overall. Even Common seems to recognise that it was a flawed work, and, maybe, Kanye would have helped to make it better.
“It’s very rare that I’d be like, ‘Man, I should’ve did this or wish I did this,’” he claimed. “Because everything happens in this divine time. But I would’ve loved to have done a third album with Ye… maybe that’ll happen at some other point.”
It was five years ago now that Common said that, but there have been no indications yet that a reunion with Kanye is on the cards. Universal Mind Control was the last album that Common ever released on Ye’s GOOD Music label, with Kanye having no involvement with any of Com’s subsequent albums.