- Common is an American hip-hop rapper
- He has a wife called Tiffany Haddish
- Commons real name is Lonnie Corant Jaman Shuka Rashid Lynn
- He was born on 13th March 1972 in Chicago
- He debuted in 1992 with the album ‘Can I Borrow a Dollar?’
- Has a net worth of £45 million
13TH:
- Directed by Ava DuVernay
- Production company: Kandoo Films
- Distributed by Netflix
- Release Date: October 7th 2016
- The film had a budget of $1,000,000
The film explores the “intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States;” it is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1865, which abolished slavery throughout the United States and ended involuntary servitude except as a punishment for conviction.
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the United States, focusing on the fact that the nation’s prisons are disproportionately filled with African-Americans.
Key Concepts:
● Cultural resistance
● Cultural hegemony
● Subcultural theory
Key idea: the political, personal and cultural are always intertwined
Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds and opinions. This is the site of popular change.
Key Terms:
● Hegemonic: dominant, ruling-class, power-holders
● Hegemonic culture: the dominant culture
● Cultural hegemony: power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means.
● Ideology: worldview – beliefs, assumptions and values
What is a subculture?
● Working-class youth culture
● Unified by shared tastes in style, music and ideology
● A solution to collectively experienced problems
● A form of resistance to cultural hegemony
Common’s lyrics:
- Instead of ‘n***a’ they use the word ‘criminal’
- Prison is a business, America’s the company
- Black bodies being lost in the American dream
5% of the worlds population is in US and 25% of worlds prisoners are American
In 1972 there were 300,000 prisoners and now there are above 2.3 million