Common: Now, another piece on the album I wanna talk about is a song called ‘Aquarius.’ Now ‘Aquarius’ is the last song that we did on the album. We got together in Philly; it was Jay Dee, Pino, ?uestlove and James Poyser and Jeff Lee Johnson. And, we were down to the - we was trying to think of some music that would be pushing it and would be a great addition to the album, and we came up with ‘Aquarius.’ When we came up with it, I heard the music and I was like ‘I’ma call this song Aquarius,’ because of the SoulQuarian team. And also, we’re dealing with the Age of Aquarius right now; we’re living in the Age of Aquarius, where we know a lot of…we’re dealing with a lot of believing and knowing, and a lot of emotion. And the Age of Aquarius is supposed to be the time when we come to believe and know what’s going on. And I just felt like, that music made me feel like it was encompassing us, (the) whole SoulQuarian vibe of pushing the envelope and taking our music somewhere else. And I kept the rhymes a little rugged talking about different things, and once I put the vocals to it – my vocals to it – I called Erykah and told her about the song. And, I said, ‘Yo E, we need some type of hippy chorus.’ And Erykah and I have been really listening to a lot of like, the Mom and Papas, and like you know, Joni Mitchell, and a lot of the, you know – that hippy music. So, so she was in, she was overseas at the time and she started humming this, this, um, melody. I told her the song was called ‘Aquarius.’ So she…I was at the airport at the time walking through to the terminal, and she came (was) like, she starting saying ‘the water bearer comes, to purify the world, watch it flying through the night, so watch out here it comes, Aquarius.’ She was basically paying homage to Aquarius in the chorus. We made it real hippy sounding, and the song you know, had a certain rhyme to it. Rugged rhymes, the music is out there, and the chorus is hippy. It all came together just to be the piece, ‘Aquarius.’

Bkyle: Yeah, so um, all right, well what you wanna uh, what song can we get into next? What’s the next song on the album?

Common: Another song on the album that we can get into…

Bkyle: Look at the paper right there.

Common: It’s the fourth piece on the album; it’s called ‘Electric Wire, Hustle Flower.’ (‘Electric Wire, Hustle Flower’ begins to play in the background) Now this song, I gave it that title because once we created the music – Jay Dee and James Poyser, um, created the music – I felt like it was a rock kind of song, but it still had a hip-hop soul to it. And for some reason, the first thing that came to mind was ‘electric wire,’ and that was describing the energy, uh, that I was feeling from the music, like electric wire, like just – high energy. The ‘Hustle’ of it was for me bringing the element of, of street to it, and not just street, but, but a little ghetto. And the soul of it, when I think about ‘hustle’ I think of people striving to do better, and just, the, the umm, the process that we go to achieve – the struggle. When I think about ‘hustle’ that’s what that was for me. ‘Flower’ was the beauty of it, so I just, when I thought of that – the thought of that title and that chorus, I just was like, ‘I’m not changing it, this is what it is.’ Many times Ahmir, ?uestlove, asked me, ‘Man, why do you keep saying ‘flower?’ Change it to ‘power’ or something.’ And I was like, ‘no, I’m using this ‘Electric Wire, Hustle Flower.’ You know, cause all those elements was what the music made me feel, the, the high energy, the struggle and the beauty…flowers, flowers are beautiful to me.

I wrote my rhyme just, charged! I was in the studio doing a rhyme and I was like, I did the first verse and I was tired after that. I was like, I told the engineer to stop for a minute, I had to take a breath cause it was like…I wasn’t used to, to really rhyming with that energy, like with that much charge. I was thinking about, ‘how am I gonna do this in a show?’ Then we perform, and we performing it now in a show, and I be tired after that song. (laughs) But um, ‘Electric Wire, Hustle’ is about, it’s just really about energy, really…uncontained energy.

the chorus of ‘Electric Wire, Hustle Flower’ song plays out this part of the interview)

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down on the upside