Common credits fellow rapper Fat Joe for saving his life in a Los Angeles/Chicago feud in the 1990s.
The rapper and actor has shared the story of how he came close to being iced over an Ice Cube diss back in the day.
The Boyz n the Hood star believed that the Chicago native was slamming West Coast rappers on his 1994 single “I Used To Love H.E.R.” and Cube hit back with a diss on Mack 10’s 1995 track “Westside Slaughterhouse.”
Common, real name Lonnie Rashid Lynn, later escalated the feud with his 1996 song “The B**ch In Yoo.”
Things got heated when a friend of Common’s visited the set of a Mack 10 commercial and decided to confront the “Gangsta Nation” star.
“My friend started basically staring down Mack 10. Just grilling him,” Common told New York City hip-hop radio station HOT 97 last week. “Mack 10 was like, ‘What you looking at, homie?’ He’s like, ‘I’m from Chicago. We look n**gas in they eye’. From that point, I know Mack 10 homie went and got they thing (a weapon) and was like, ‘Yo.'”
“My guy did a little more after that, too, just agitating the situation. Fat Joe said, ‘Your man gotta go. He gotta leave. He can’t stay.’ And it’s about to get real in here.
“That brother kinda saved my life. Fat Joe saved my life.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMlYFcONsS8
Mack 10 and his crew ended up “roughing up” Common’s friend, but the Say Peace star said that it wasn’t “too bad” because security intervened.
Later on, Bronx rapper Joe, real name Joseph Antonio Cartagena, told Common he’d persuaded Mack’s posse to leave him alone.
Ice Cube and Common eventually ended their feud and have since collaborated on tracks like “Real People” from 2016’s “Barbershop: The Next Cut movie.”