“In My Own World (Check the Method)” f/ No I.D.

Produced by: No I.D.

Common: “No I.D. rhymed on the first album and all my boys was like, ‘Man, Dion ate you up. His voice is so good.’ I was like, ‘Man, I gotta be able to say something on this because on ‘Two Scoops of Raisin,’ he won that battle.’ No matter what, when you rapping on a song with somebody, somebody always say, ‘Man, such-and-such killed him.’ So, you better kill it.

“No I.D. might have made that when we were back in Chicago, I’m not sure. But it was one of those songs where it was like, ‘I gotta come with it because No I.D. is on it. He been killing’ it.’

“We went out to Long Island to do some of the mixing on the album. This one engineer, I went rolling with him and we went to get some weed. I ain’t a big weed smoker, but I got some weed. I smoked it and I started tripping.

“I had a bad trip. I was sitting on the bed just rubbing my knees, like, ‘Oh, shit!’ I was thinking I was gonna die. I was thinking all kinds of crazy things. I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know what’s up.’ I was on a bad trip for two days. I ended up having to go back to Chicago and just get calmed down.

“I like the whole ‘Yeah, now check the method!’ That was one of my favorite lines on that Midnight Marauders album. That and Buhloone Mindstate, those two specific albums really had a big influence on me. Illmatic came later on in the process of me making the album, but hearing’ Nas influenced me.”

No I.D.: “That was a song that was originally mine, and Common wanted it. The history of me doing beats for him started when we were all in a rap group together when we were younger. So when I left college and came back around, I had to make my own beats to rhyme on. But most of the time when I’d do beats for myself, Common would hear them and say ‘No, I want that one for myself.’ So I’d already had a verse on it. So that was actually Common jumping on my record. [Laughs.]

"I’d rapped on Can I Borrow A Dollar? [as Immenslope] and everyone kept telling him that I outrapped him. So it became a little personal for him at that point. [Laughs.] Looking back at it, it wasn’t even a friendly competition, it was pretty unfriendly. [Laughs.]

“Once I saw the music business change, I realized being a rapper wasn’t something I wanted to do. I did have one album come out (Accept Your Own & Be Yourself: The Black Album), and being a creative person, sometimes you just have to get that energy out. I wanted to see if I could sink or swim; and it satisfied me. But then I realized I didn’t want to tour—I did one or two shows and one video and I was like, ‘Enough.’

"As a producer though, I still contribute. Sometimes I’ll tell the rapper how the song should go, or contribute patterns, or give them lines. I still have it in me. I still write, but I have no aspirations to rap ever again. [Laughs.] Now I’m around the best rappers in the world, but having that charisma and all those other intangibles, I’m not interested in any of that. [Laughs.]"