Common

Common put Chicago on the hip-hop map when the genre was still dominated almost entirely by New York and Los Angeles. Can I Borrow a Dollar?, released in 1992 under the name Common Sense, was raw, jazzy, and unmistakably his own even this early, No I.D. and The Twilite Tone behind the boards on most of it. It was the first step toward a career that would go on to include three gold albums, work with J Dilla and Kanye West, multiple Grammys, and an Academy Award.