Common & Stevie Wonder
A Common Wonder
By Amerigo Gazaway
With our latest Soul Mates Project release, fittingly titled A Common Wonder, Amerigo Gazaway brings to life an imagined studio session between Chicagos crowned prince of Hip-Hop, Common, and Motown legend, Stevie Wonder.
A return to the Soul meets Hip-Hop formula of his Marvin Gaye + Mos Def pairing Yasiin Gaye, Gazaway connects the dots between Hip-Hop and the genres predecessor with a musical history lesson told through the intersecting themes of Common and Stevies respective catalogues. As Gazaway put it:
Stevie Wonders early use of synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers, in a lot of ways, paved the way for hip-hop and sampling. Part of my motivation for this project was to highlight those contributions
Picking up where Common and Stevie’s 2016 Black America Again, single left off, Amerigo brings his imagined recording session to life with a slew of uncovered resources (including multitrack instrument stems, interview audio, and documentary soundbites.) Re-orchestrating deconstructed samples, the producer interweaves Commons vivid wordplay and Wonders passionate vocals for a project that blurs the line between a mashup and a modern day duets album.
Tracklist:
01. Intro Theme (I Wonder) 0:00
02. I Was Made To Love H.E.R. 03:04
03. Living For The Chi-City 09:35
04. Ressurection To Higher Ground 13:59
05. Bad Girl (feat. Kanye West) 19:31
06. The Sixth Superstition 24:10
07. Innervision Intermission 28:43
08. Sugar by The Pound 30:41
09. For Once In My Life (feat. Erykah Badu) 36:27
10. Like They Used to Say 40:21
11. God Bless the Freestyle 46:58
12. The Light (Im Yours) feat. Bobby Caldwell 50:27
13. Southside (feat. Kanye West) 55:52
14. Pops Rap (feat. Lonnie Lynn, Sr.) 1:00:26
15. The Sixth Wonder (Bonus Track) 1:06:14