*In his new memoir, “Let Love Have the Last Word,” rapper Common opens up about his illustrious career, his relationship with his 22-year-old daughter and a deeply painful childhood experience that he is still trying to wrap his head around… with the help of a therapist.
In the book, the Oscar winner reveals that it wasn’t until two years ago, while workshopping a scene with actress and friend Laura Dern for their roles in “The Tale,” that he recalled being molested as a kid.
“One day, while talking through the script with Laura, old memories surprisingly flashed in my mind,” he writes. “I caught my breath and just kept looping the memories over and over, like rewinding an old VHS tape…I said ‘Laura, I think I was abused.’”
The alleged abuse occurred when he was just 9 or 10-years-old while growing up in Chicago.
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“I was excited for a road trip I was about to take with my family. My mother; my godmother, Barbara; her son and my godbrother Skeet; and his relative, who I’ll call Brandon…”
Common says he and Brandon had to share a bed one night of the trip while staying at his aunt’s house.
“At some point I felt Brandon’s hand on me,” he writes. “I pushed him away. I don’t remember saying a whole lot besides ‘No, no, no.’”
But Brandon would not stop.
“He kept saying ‘It’s okay, It’s okay,’ as he pulled down my shorts and molested me. After he stopped he kept asking me to perform it on him. I kept repeating ‘No’ and pushing him away,” the rapper writes. “I felt a deep and sudden shame for what happened.”
Common “pushed the whole thing out of my head,” he writes.
“Maybe it’s a matter of survival—Even now, two years after that flash resurgence of memories, as I’m writing, I’m still working through all of this in myself and with my therapist.”
The hip-hop star and activist says he has never spoken about the incident with the abuser, who he hasn’t seen in over 25 years.
During his GMA interview with Robin Roberts, Common said, as a black man, “we don’t talk about those issues in ways that we could. I felt I wanted to create a space for people who have experienced that to be able to share that. That’s part of the healing, to be honest. No sooner than I told the story, one of my good friends came out and told me it had happened to him.”
He also noted that the abuse was “something that I didn’t know if I wanted to talk about,” he said. “But I really believe that in telling my story, other people will be OK with talking about that situation.”
Common also said he has finally reach a place of forgiveness.
“It’s still a process for me, in certain ways,” he said. “But I have to look at my life and know that, man, that’s somebody else’s pain that they kinda distributed to me. And I don’t wanna carry that, so let me figure out how it is affecting me and approach it head on, deal with it, and let it go.”
Fans can pre-order “Let Love Have the Last Word” today.
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