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Sunday, February 22, 2015

BREAKING: Common And John Legend Won An Oscar!

Glory won the best motion picture score.

Common and John Legend won an Oscar. They join Eminem and Three Six Mafia as Oscar award winning hip-hop entertainers. Their song for the hit movie Selma took home an Oscar. It also defies the little controversy ensuing nominees being mostly White performers.

Congratulations to Common and John Legend. Glory won the Oscar for the Best Score in a Motion Picture.

Wikipedia give a brief summary of both entertainers.

Common debuted in 1992 with the album Can I Borrow a Dollar? and maintained a significant underground following into the late 1990s, after which he gained notable mainstream success through his work with the Soulquarians.

In 2011, Common launched Think Common Entertainment, his own record label imprint and in the past has released music under various other labels such as Relativity, Geffen and GOOD Music, among others.

Common's first major-label album, Like Water for Chocolate, received widespread critical acclaim and tremendous commercial success.

His first Grammy Award was in 2003, winning Best R&B Song for "Love of My Life", with Erykah Badu.

Its popularity was matched by May 2005's Be, which was nominated for Best Rap Album, at the 2006 Grammy Awards. Common was awarded his second Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, for "Southside" (featuring Kanye West), from his July 2007 album Finding Forever. His best-of album, Thisisme Then: The Best of Common, was released on November 27, 2007.

Common won the 2015 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song, and the 2015 Academy Award for Best Original Song, for his song "Glory" from the 2014 film Selma, in which he co-starred as 1960s Civil Rights Movement leader James Bevel.

Common's acting career also includes starring significant roles in the films Smokin' Aces, Street Kings, American Gangster, Wanted, Terminator Salvation, Date Night, Just Wright, Happy Feet Two, and New Year's Eve. He also narrated the award-winning documentary Bouncing Cats, about one man's efforts to improve the lives of children in Uganda through hip-hop/b-boy culture.

He starred as Elam Ferguson on the AMC western television series Hell on Wheels.

John Legend was born in Springfield, Ohio. He is one of four children of Phyllis Elaine (née Lloyd), a seamstress, and Ronald Lamar Stephens, a factory worker and former National Guardsman.

Throughout his childhood, Legend was homeschooled on and off by his mother. At age four, he performed with his church choir. He began playing the piano at age seven. In 1987, when he was nine, his parents divorced. At the age of twelve, Legend attended North High School, from which he graduated four years later. Upon his salutatorian graduation, Legend was offered admission to Harvard University and scholarships to Georgetown University and Morehouse College. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he studied English with an emphasis on African American literature.



While in college, Legend served as president and musical director of a co-ed jazz and pop a cappella group called Counterparts. His lead vocals on the group's recording of Joan Osborne's "One of Us" received critical acclaim landing the song on the track list of the 1998 Best of Collegiate a Cappella compilation CD.

Legend was also a member of the prestigious senior societies Sphinx Senior Society and Onyx Senior Honor Society while an undergraduate at Penn. While in college, Legend was introduced to Lauryn Hill by a friend. Hill hired him to play piano on "Everything Is Everything", a song from her album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

During this period, he began to hold a number of shows around Philadelphia, eventually expanding his audience base to New York, Boston, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C. He finished college in 1999, and thereafter began producing, writing, and recording his own music. He released two albums independently; his self-titled demo (2000) and Live at Jimmy's Uptown (2001), which he sold at his shows. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Legend began working as a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group.

During this time, he began working on his demo and began sending his work to various record labels.

In 2001, Devo Springsteen introduced Legend to then up-and-coming hip-hop artist Kanye West; Legend was hired to sing during the hooks of West's music. After signing to West's label, he chose his stage name from an idea that was given to him by poet J. Ivy, due to what he perceived "old-school sound". J. Ivy stated, "I heard your music and it reminds me of that music from the old school.

You sound like one of the legends. As a matter of fact, that's what I'm going to call you from now on!

I'm going to call you John Legend." After J. Ivy continued to call him by the new moniker "John Legend," others quickly caught on, including Kanye West, and the name stuck. Despite Legend's reluctance to change his stage name, he eventually announced his new artist name as John Legend.

Common (Lonnie Lynn) and John Legend (John Stevens) are affiliated with Kanye West and his label G.O.O.D. Music. Common is a signed artist on Def Jam and John Legend is a signed artist on Sony Urban Music.

The conservative agitators aren't going to love this. Common and John Legend are friends with Barack and Michelle Obama.

A few years back, Common was invited to the White House for a poetic session and that annoying conservative agitator went bonkers over it.

Also the conservative agitators hated the fact that John Legend and Common both express concern about Black men being profiled by police.

Common currently attends Trinity United Church of Christ. The church was the scapegoat in the Jeremiah Wright controversy.

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