Common’s Listerine Partnership Is More Than An Advertisement And Theme Song

Common has one of the freshest flows and most striking smiles in Hip-Hop, so it only made sense for him to partner up with Listerine and Compound for The Whoa Collection. For the 52-year-old rapper, it’s more than attaching his name to something and creating a branded theme song; their mission is to educate the people on the diversity gap in dentistry within the Black community.

“That’s just what I’ve grown to live and to be and to want to project to our communities, especially a lot of Black and Brown communities who don’t get exposure to healthcare as much and just wellness,” he told VIBE. “And when I was exposed to the fact or taught that they were really honing in on the diversity of hygiene and oral healthcare, I was like, ‘This is where it needs to be for me, really supporting Black dentists.’ For me, when I’m a partner, I wanted to have a higher purpose overall.”

The Chicago rapper put his pen to paper to create “The Art Of Freshness,” a smooth rap record that falls in his poetic, pensive wheelhouse. He collaborated with producers Set Free and Buda Da Future to record a track which, to us, sounded like it could be heard by patients as they wait in the lobby for their dentist appointment. “[Set Free] created the music and said it felt like the artwork that he felt on the bottles, which had a little jazzy, peaceful serenity to it that it did feel fresh, but cool,” he said. “I can’t say I thought about a dentist’s office, but I did think about it being somewhere in a cool lounge where you would hear this song and man, why not make the dentist’s office feel cool?”

While Common added value to the campaign, he also walked away with more knowledge that could empower the work he is doing alongside Listerine, Compound, and The Increasing Diversity in Dentistry pipeline program (IDID). “I didn’t know how much we as a Black community needed to be more adamant about our oral healthcare and how few amount of Black dentists are getting supported,” he emphatically stated.

“‘Oh, that is the spark and the centerpiece for me, the motivation for me to do this.’ I love that now that Listerine is doing something with that by going out and having the IDID program,” he continued. “I thought about how important it is to have Black dentists because we normally, people, the community, they go to people who look like them. They go to people they trust. That’s just what it is, and that doesn’t mean you can’t go to other nationalities for healthcare, but it is nice to be able to go within your community.”

For Common, this partnership reminded him of something he learned early on: Hip-Hop can impact change. “You could change people’s lives and ways of thinking by making it fresh and presenting something that is really dope to people, something great, and it happened for me,” he exclaimed. “So I believe there’s great ways that Listerine and I and Set Free can present these things and make it a part of people’s lifestyles and part of their lives in the way we do take care of our oral health.”

Common’s lengthy career has been highlighted by one recurring theme: staying true to himself and his sound. So while a branded partnership with Listerine may make people immediately think of some type of commercial jingle, he and his collaborators were keen on maintaining his artistic identity. “As I was writing, I was thinking about how fresh translates to so many aspects of life because, to me, it’s another word that is synonymous with excellence, beauty, fresh,” he said.

“We had a trumpet player who I love. His name is Keyon Harrold who also played trumpet on it. And so it was me building it like, ‘Yo, this is my song. This is my song.’ And in partnering with Listerine, I love that they were like, ‘Yo, let’s just create something great musically and you don’t have to stay within this line and this box. You don’t have to be boxed in.’”

On the topic of freshness, it was a major point of inquiry to ask what he deems the five freshest songs in his discography. “That’s a great one. The five freshest songs,” he said as he pondered his response. “The five freshest songs. One, I’m going to say is this song called ‘1999.’ I would say ‘I Used to Love H.E.R.’ just because the love that’s in the song has something fresh about it. I would put ‘The Light‘ in there. I would put this song called ‘Geto Heaven, Part Two.’ It’s something about that that feels bright and fresh and uplifting. The last song is I’m just going to go with [is] ‘It’s Your World.’ It’s so much hope in that and it’s so much aspiration.”

Being a man of many words and with such an extensive catalogue, Common was offered a bonus track to add to the list since it seemed like five would not be enough. He added, “Oh, I want to put one of the new songs [with Pete Rock]. It’s called ‘Dreamin‘.”

Check out “The Art Of Freshness” and what the three-time Grammy winner believes are his six freshest songs above. More importantly, purchase a bottle of Listerine’s The Whoa Collection, read up on the Compound and IDID, and learn about what can be done to help close the diversity gap in the Black community as it pertains to dentistry.