Common made a surprise appearance at President Obama's South By Southlawn festival earlier this week, and he performed three brand new songs inside the White House for NPR's Tiny Desk concert series.
Watch Common's "Tiny Desk" concert here.
Common debuted three new songs, presumably off of his upcoming new album, during an intimate acoustic set performed inside the White House library. The first of Common's new tracks is "Letter to the Free," which will also appear on the soundtrack for Selmadirector Ava Duvernay's upcoming new film The 13th, which compares slavery to the institutionalized racism and mass incarceration the black community is faced with in modern times. Common also performed the optimistic, pro-feminist "The Day The Women Took Over," and "Little Chicago Boy," a nostalgic track dedicated to Common's late father, Lonnie Lynn, who performed several spoken word tracks on some of Common's earlier records and who Common attributes his own social awareness and political activism to.
The Chicago rapper also revisited one of his classic hits "I Used to Love H.E.R," a track that originally appeared on his 1994 album Resurrection.
The South By Southlawn event was a project created by President Obama and the organizers of the famed music, movie, tech and art festival South By Southwest, which is held in Austin, Texas every year. The South By Southlawn event was held specifically to give a stage to artists with a positive political message.
