Lyrics Letter To The Free - Commentary - Common

A letter to the free
That's what it's, initially was called
Now, I guess it's labeled "Letter To The Free"
I, I called it A Letter to the Free
This song, it started because I read a book called, "The New Jim Crow"
And Ava DuVernay, was doing a film, did the film called "13"
And she was doin' it at the time, and I hadn't seen the film but I was like
"Ava, I wanna be a part of this movie"
Because I'm this subject of mass incarceration, as I have learned to understand
This is really, like a issue that we need to talk about

And that's what the movie is about, very like, powerful
But, I started writing before she said yes
I was just like, she was like, "Hey, different people, so many songs"
You know, check it out, write songs, I started rapping it to her
I was at the White House, we were at the White House celebratin'
Our President's birthday party, I would rap it in her ear like
This and this, and then she eventually was like, "Okay, it's good, it's good"
And then she set, ah, the film for me to see, even though it wasn't done
And that's when I continued to write and wrote the second verse

But, it was all in my soul, you know, certain things you do
Are, is your calling, and I feel like, this is my calling
To talk about these issues, to start conversations
I don't have all the solutions, but I just, sometimes just wanna give
Conversations and-and you have to, you know, to me a letter to the free
Is like, we're talking about mass incarceration
But you still gotta to make it beautiful

You still gotta make it hit people in their spirits so
You know, they'd listen to it, and you list Twitter
And you start getting whatever information or you start the conversation there
Uhm, that rocks, by the way ah
So, we got Bilal, because Karim and Rob, we started creating this song
And we were Houston, I flew in, we flew together
We flew down to work, started working on
We said, "We gotta get Bilal on this"

We gotta get Helena to play flute and she sang on it too
We had the kids, like, like Karim's son, stomping and clapping
That's, that's precaution part of it, like we are in the Studio, stomping and clapping
Bringin' that spirit to it, like so, it could feel like we breakin' chains and that
This comes from the whole spiritual aspect
We got Roy Hargrove in there playing a trumpet

Each person is like, playing for freedom
Each, each verse is about freedom and um, we wrote the song for the movie
Just to free, we wanna free our minds
And free up the, the people who are dealing, with um, mass incarceration
That's what A Letter to The Free is
(Alright) alright