For the first time in what seems in what must be a decade, Common is speaking up about his break-up with Erykah Badu. Admittedly, the break-up was made all the more tragic, not because Erykah Badu landed some kind of hex on his inner-being, but because their relationship, was his in his own estimation, his first real love.
“With Erykah Badu, that was my first love where you’re just open and floating,” he said. “When we split, I was 27 or 28. I was in a haze, just going through the motions. It was hard to eat."
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While the pair were romantically involved, they produced some of Common's best material: songs like "The Light" and "Love of My Life," which in turn meant that any time he was asked to perform those numbers, he would be subjected to a whole slew of unmitigated emotional trauma. Thankfully, as time wore on, those wounds would heal, and thus the light to "love again" regenerated itself.
With regards to the break-up, Common doesn't harbor any ill-will on an incidental basis. "It wasn’t her fault, the relationship just didn’t go forward," he admitted years after the fact. He would then go onto to explain that a second "tragic" break-up would occur soon after, shaping the circumference of his adult life. For every wives tale we hear about Erykah's vaunted appeal, consider this: Common was a pup when all this went down.