Multiple Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist Common [ tickets ] was born on the south side of Chicago in the early 1970s. By age 20, he had dropped his first single, "Take It EZ," which led to the release of his debut album "Can I Borrow a Dollar?" At the time, he was known as Common Sense.

His 1994 set "Resurrection" garnered him a larger profile in the genre in more ways than one; lyrics from "I Used to Love H.E.R.," which criticized the degradation of women in commercial hip-hop, among other things, drew the ire of Ice Cube's Westside Connection [ tickets ], flaming an early skirmish of the infamous East Coast-West Coast hip-hop rivalry.