Legendary MC, activist, and actor. Common is telling his truth in the latest memoir Let Love Have The Last Word. Throughout the book, he talks about how therapy has changed his life and how he was sexually abused as a child.
In the new memoir, the Golden Globe, Oscar, and Grammy award-winner shares that while doing scene work with fellow actor Laura Dern, the memory of him being molested as a child came back to the forefront of his mind and he couldn’t shake it.
“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.’”
He then gives a detailed account of his experience that took place on a family road trip.
“I was excited for a road trip I was about to take with my family. My mother; my godmother, Barbara; her son and my god-brother Skeet; and his relative, who I’ll call Brandon…”
“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.’ 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.”
The Chicago MC truly says ever since the incident he suppressed all memories and feelings, adding, “I just pushed the whole thing out of my head. 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.”
Let Love Have The Last Word is available now.