The rapper's father was a star basketball player who struggled to get involved in his son’s life. The year that Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., the American actor, rapper and poet better known by his stage name Common, was born was the same year that his father, Lonnie Sr., was hitting rock bottom. The elder Lynn’s dreams of becoming a pro basketball player had never materialized, and the 29-year-old had spiraled into a fog of drug addiction and alcohol abuse. If you’ve heard any of the thoughtful spoken-word soliloquies that Lynn, aka “Pops,” who died in 2014, delivered on his son’s albums, you’ve heard him reflect on that time period. “I was hanging out, mad at the world. My professional basketball career was over,” Lynn says, in “Pop’s Rap Part 2/Fatherhood” on the 1997 album One Day It’ll All Make Sense, “and I was dissipating.” | 