Common Reveals He Did This To Be Able To Use Bobby Caldwell Sample In “The Light”
Common’s “The Light” is one of the most enduring records in his catalog, but it came with a steep cost. The 52-year-old rapper revealed that he had to pay Bobby Caldwell 100% of his publishing for sampling him on the classic song.
The Chicago rapper joined Juan Ep Is Life earlier this month to promote his new album with Pete Rock called The Auditorium Vol. 1. The conversation transitioned to “The Light,” which was produced by J. Dilla, and whether he ever had a conversation with Caldwell about sampling his track “Open Your Eyes.”
“I wanna say, God rest his soul,” Common said. “And I feel bad: at one point he had wanted us to do a record together and we ain’t get to do it. He did charge us 100% publishing for that. And to this day, Questlove and my lawyer, and Derek who is my manager and one of my best friends said, ‘Take that song off the album.’”
Common tells the story of creating "The Light" with Dilla and reveals they had to give Bobby Caldwell 100% of the publishing to clear the sample. He also says his manager, lawyer and Questlove tried to get him to leave it off 'Like Water For Chocolate'
(via @JuanEpIsLife) pic.twitter.com/bkWdWN3KQy— Andrew Barber (@fakeshoredrive) July 18, 2024
Common understood that they were thinking about “The Light” from a business perspective but he felt the song was too good to leave off his 2000 album Like Water For Chocolate. “I said, ‘Are y’all f**king crazy?’” he recalled. “Questlove said he was tryna talk me out of it, he was tryna figure out how he could talk me into taking that song off the album. He’d just say, ‘Aww, I don’t think it fit the rest of the Dilla-vibe beats and stuff.'”
The “Go!” rapper still doesn’t regret the decision, especially seeing the success of “The Light.” He also revealed that the sample wasn’t initially part of the song, but instead was added after he conceived his verses.
“What happened in the creation of that song was, Dilla and I was riding around,” he told Juan Epstein. “We was listening to a beat CD. Dilla was playing the beats, and then Frank [Nitt] told me, ‘Yo, wait til this next beat come on.’ […] We was about to go get some food, and I said, ‘Man, I love that, but can you change the drums?’ He said, ‘We ain’t going to get no food.’ We went right back to his spot. And he put the new drums.”
Common continued to recall how “The Light” evolved to its final product that the world heard. “I came back to New York, wrote the love song,” he said. “Then he put the hook, he put the scratches to compose the hook. That wasn’t on the beat initially. It was like he constructed that hook around what I was talking about. But it was Bobby Caldwell’s song that made it; and it was J. Dilla’s composition of putting that hook together that made it what it is.”
“The Light” marked a historic achievement for Common. It was his first song to reach the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and peaked at No. 44. It was also a tribute to his girlfriend at the time, Erykah Badu.
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