mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm
If there is a more perfect face, one more worth contemplating and exalting, than Erykah Badu's, I haven't seen it. And so, it makes splendid sense that Common's luscious, luminous video for "The Light" makes artful use — and art — of Erykah Badu and his overwhelming admiration for her. Not to mention her toes fresh out the shower, her arms, her lips, and all-seeing eyes. Framed as a letter to Badu, his very own lady-love, and sampling from Bobby Caldwell's sweet "Open Your Eyes," "The Light" is a charming, tender, and undeniably soulful declaration of affection and respect.
Everyone knows that there are precious few hiphop love songs, and Common's well-crafted paean — to Badu, beauty, and music — is surely a welcome intervention into business as usual. At the time of Like Water for Chocolate's release (even as the first single, "The Sixth Sense," was rotating), "The Light" was almost immediately appreciated and anointed a women's anthem, expanding on the more specifically, politically situated tribute of Tupac's much-beloved "Keep Ya Head Up" or Method Man's "You're All That I Need." As Common raps in the song, "It don't take a whole day to recognize sunshine."
The video for "The Light" is awash with romantic iconography and built on a conventionally ode-ish structure, filtered light and emotional invocations. And yet it is remarkably uncorny, and avoids objectifying the woman at its center. The scene is a domestic interior, but the partners never appear in the same shot until the last frames: his overture is gradual and reverential, soaking up the details of their shared experience bit by bit. At first, as he raps, head bowed in contemplation, this uncommonly articulate soul is rendered nearly inarticulate. "Yeah," he sighs, "Doo-doo-doo, mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm-mmm." He gathers his thoughts and begins: "Queen, I ain't seen you in a minute / Wrote this letter, and finally decide to send it / Signed, sealed, delivered for us to grow together." And there it is: love — real love — makes you quote Stevie Wonder.
From here and through the rest of the video, shots alternate between images of Common rapping, his head bowed in contemplation ("It's important, we communicate"), and closeups of immediately recognizable sensual delights: a homemade Minnie Ripperton cassette, a peach, a pink lava lamp, a deeply green water-beaded leaf. And always, Badu. She eats a bit of fruit, flexes her arm for herself in a mirror, thumbs a small kalimba, all images that suggest that even as the poet imagines her for us, she is also alone, alive independently of her lover, that she moves and feels without his observance, that she lives her own meaning and brings possibilities to him. "It's kinda fresh you listen to more than hip-hop / And I can catch you in the mix from beauty to thrift shop." Yes, she's impressive and unexpected, and yes, she's elusive and unpredictable and as we all know, a brilliant artist in her own right. "I never call you my bitch or even my boo / There's so much in a name and so much more in you."
It's a risky thing, for two celebrities to declare their love for one another in public, to document it on film or video. There's always the chance that the relationship will end, and then where will they be? Think of Billy Joel's ode to Christie Brinkley in "Uptown Girl," or Lily Taylor and Michael Rapaport's poignant lovers' quarrel in Subway Stories, or Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley's sorta shared, sorta not nakedness in "You're Not Alone." These images look almost sad now (admittedly, the Michael-Lisa Marie union was always strange). And yet, for some reason — perhaps only because the relationship is at this precise moment so lovely in our imaginations, so simultaneously ethereal and solid — Common's video-love-poem works. It voices hopes and desires more than promises, reverence and amazement more than possession. At the end of the video, when Badu reposes and Common settles himself at the foot of her bed, it's clear enough what he's saying: "Digga-da, digga-da, digga-da, digga-digga-da-da."
