So much is made about the supposed brevity of Hip-Hop careers, but it's no longer an anomaly to see rappers who are at or over 50 years old still doing their thing. The rapper once called Common Sense reached that benchmark this year, and he shows no signs of slowing.

30 years ago, he debuted with the brash Can I Borrow A Dollar?, a Chicago rapper breaking big at a time when most people had no idea what Chicago rap sounded like. By the end of the 1990s, he'd morphed from the wordy boom bap of his early days into a more soulful, thoughtful persona; he'd dropped the "Sense" from his moniker on 1997's One Day It'll All Make Sense, and by the dawn of the 2000s, he'd become an affiliate of the Soulquarians collective and something of an unlikely crossover star. That year's Like Water For Chocolate saw him break through commercial (via hit single "The Light") and become one-half of a high profile celebrity couple via his romance with singer-songwriter Erykah Badu. For so many, Common became eternally branded an earthtones-and-incense granola rap superstar.

It was a label he was never all that comfortable with.

"Am I like this conscious dude [who is] serious all the time?,” he asked back in 2016. “I feel like I have different aspects to me as a man, point blank. You know…I’m a spiritual person; I like to kick it and drink and have fun. I might be talking about James Baldwin [one moment], but I might be lookin’ at a thick girl like, ‘Yo, what’s up?’ [the next moment]. I feel like it’s just what human beings are—who we are. So that stereotype of me or whatever—perception, it doesn’t really bother me. Initially, it did, ’cause I was like, ‘Y’all keep puttin’ me in the 'conscious'” category—I know I got on this crochet, but damn, I still might smack this nigga if I need to.'”

After the lukewarm reception to 2002s genre-bending Electric Circus, Common seemingly stepped back from the earthy alt-rap precipice; joining forces with fellow Chicago son Kanye West on 2005s acclaimed Be. That album saw Common re-asserting himself as the thoughtful street poet he'd presented as in the 1990s, and kickstarted the second act of what was already a formidable career.

That Common would become an across-the-board superstar wasn't something anyone could have predicted. His early guest appearances on popular sitcoms were pretty standard fare: it wasn't unusual to see rap stars turn up on shows like Girlfriends and Scrubs. And when he made his big screen debut in the crime caper Smokin' Aces, it simply appeared as though Common was joining the long line of rappers-turned-part-time actors.

Except that it soon became evident that Common was pushing for something higher. Acting wasn't just an opportunity to expand a brand or heighten visibility. By the time he appeared in 2007s American Gangster, it was obvious that he was taking his acting very seriously.

"I didn't approach acting thinking, 'I want to be a rapper-turned-actor,'" Common told Michele Miller in 2019. "I approach acting saying, 'How can I aspire to be at Denzel level, Sean Penn level? Marlon Brando? Like, Leonardo DiCaprio? Philip Seymour Hoffman?'"

He would develop an enviable resume as an actor. Sharing the screen with stars like Morgan Freeman and Halle Berry, he appeared in everything from action blockbusters like Wanted and Terminator: Salvation to comedies like Date Night and New Years Eve. And he's co-starred with fellow Hip-Hop-turned-Hollywood stars like Ice Cube, (in the 2016 sequel Barbershop: The Last Cut) and Queen Latifah, who starred opposite Common in the hit rom-com Just Wright back in 2010.

In the three decades since he made his debut, we've seen Lonnie Rashid Lynn go from wisecracking 20-year old Windy City emcee to 50-year old Oscar-winning multi-hyphenate. Beyond any job description, however, is the growth that the man has embraced while in the public eye. Common today is much more famous than he was back in 1992, and Hip-Hop fans and peers got to see his rise in real time. That means we got to witness the growth that came with that rise. In looking across the landscape of his journey, in recent years, Common seems to be proud of where he's come from. Not just his geographical hometown, but the evolution that sparked both from it and from expanding outside of it.

He's done great work with a number of superstar producers, but his most significant musical relationship has arguably been with the legendary No I.D. From the sample-heavy boom bap of ...Dollar?, the two Chicagoans put on for their city, as Common would become one of rap's most venerated rhymers and No I.D. became a superproducer of the highest order.

There are things Common has infamously rapped about that he rejects now as personal philosophy. On 2005’s ‘Real People’, he dismissed interracial relationships (“Black men walking wit white girls on they arms/ I be mad at em--as if I know they moms.”); and criticized the idea of gay rappers on 2000s "Nag Champa (Afrodisiac For The World)": "It's rumors of gay emcees, just don't come around me with it/You still rockin' hickies, don't let me find out he did it."

“Where I grew up it’s very segregated and being a figure in the Black community you do have a lot of responsibility," he said in a 2019 interview with NME. "You can only speak from what you’ve experienced and knowing what your community holds you to. But at a certain point, you also start to see the world and experience new things and you see that the world is bigger than just the segregated parts of Chicago."

“Some of the things I thought I had to be as a Black person, or had to be as a man, I later recognized I needed to unlearn some of that stuff.”

He's now an Oscar and Grammy Award-winning icon. In many ways, Common's career is parallel to Hip-Hop's journey over the past 30 years. From the hardscrabble underdog of the early 1990s, to the maturing craftsman post Y2K; from the crossover superstar that took Hollywood, to the revered elder statesman that crosses all demographic bounds. Common Sense has continued to grow, as a man and as an artist. His two-part Beautiful Revolution series is the latest example of the creative he's become. Hip-Hop is no longer simply a young man's game, and it doesn't need to be. We should all be so fortunate as to continue doing what we love into our fifties.