Though it might seem crazy now—considering their personalities, and five years after Cube virtually ended N.W.A. on “No Vaseline”—Common annihilated Cube with his response. The Pete Rock-produced “The Bitch In Yoo,” issued as the A-side of a split single with No I.D. in 1996, is one of rap’s most brutal diss tracks. The first verse alone is a thorough dismantling of Cube’s career, with Common claiming his West Coast cred is ridiculous (hiring the Long Island-based Bomb Squad for his debut), calling out his blatant careerism (“Went from gangsta to Islam to the dick of Das EFX”), and insinuating he’s a bad actor (with sly references to Higher Learning and Friday).
It took the deaths of 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G., and the intervention of Louis Farrakhan, to squash the beef. At the Hip-Hop Summit in Chicago in April of 1997, Farrakhan addressed the assembled rappers, including Cube, Common, Snoop Dogg, and the Dogg Pound: “All this turf you fighting for—East Coast, West Coast—who owns it? Not you.” Farrakhan is acknowledged for ending the feud, but the deeper truth is that both men had changed. For Cube, he’d successfully made a transition to acting and was gradually assuming a role as a family man. Common had also recently become a father, and he was transformed by the Million Man March, which he attended. As he writes in One Day It’ll All Make Sense, the event inspired him to be comfortable with expressing love and solidarity.
To date, Resurrection has sold fewer than 250,000 copies, but it earned Common Sense respect. It also attracted more national attention, including from a California-based reggae band with the same name that sued the rapper over the rights. Common dropped the “Sense” before the 1997 follow-up LP, One Day It’ll All Make Sense, which simultaneously refined and expanded on the approach he and No I.D. took on Resurrection.
Shortly afterwards, he will leave Chicago and move to New York City. He will go and join the Soulquarians collective, garnering him larger audiences and further accolades; then he will drop an ambitious, experimental, psych-informed album that will bomb. He will date singers and athletes and movie stars; then he will think he can act. He will become an actor, questionably; then he will fight Keanu Reeves, believably. He will constantly cycle through success and embarrassment. He will come remarkably close to an EGOT. And all along, the sun will still rise every day over Lake Michigan.
