Music Video: Common - Letter to the Free

Our first Music Video CSP is Common - Letter to the Free.

This is a stunning music video and protest song that documents black American culture and the legacy of slavery.

Notes from the lesson

Common: a pioneering artist

Common is a Black American cultural icon who has maintained a political and social concern in his music. At one of the most charged periods in American history, the video Letter to the Free is presented as his contribution to the divisive political and social issues of contemporary America, a sense that he is attempting to draw attention to initiating a new wave of ‘protest music’.

Michael Eric Dyson on Common

Dyson on black stereotypes and Common: “Many critics don’t account for the complex ways that some artists in hip hop play with stereotypes to either subvert or reverse them. Amid the pimp mythologies and metaphors that gut contemporary hip hop, rappers like Common… seize on pimpology’s prominence to poke fun at its pervasiveness. 

“Hip hop is still fundamentally an art form that traffics in hyperbole, parody, kitsch, dramatic license, double entendres, signification, and other literary and artistic conventions to get its point across.”

Michael Eric Dyson, Know What I Mean (2007)

Common - Selma soundtrack

Common and John Legend wrote Glory as the soundtrack for Selma, a 2014 film portraying the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, a key moment in the Civil Rights Movement.



The marches were a non-violent protest to demonstrate the desire of black Americans to exercise their constitutional right to vote.

Common returned to the theme of protest with Letter to the Free – highlighting the mass incarceration of black Americans. 


Common: Letter to the Free

Letter to the Free was directed by Bradford Young (the cinematographer on Selma). The video has the camera moving at a slow, aching pace through an empty prison where Common, singers Andra Day and Bilal, and other musicians perform the song in different spaces in the prison rooms. 

A black square hovering in the air appears throughout the clip, which, in a final shot, is framed as empty space in a field.

Amendment 13: ‘Black Codes’

The song was written for Ava DuVernay’s Netflix documentary 13th focusing on the historic legacy of the 13th amendment to the US Constitution. Theoretically written to outlaw slavery, the 13th Amendment had the effect of paving the way for local and State law reforms that created loopholes that effectively enabled the continued enslavement of Black Americans through mass imprisonment. The so-called Black Codes, introduced at state level in the southern states, provided for forced labour as punishment for petty crimes that in reality only applied to the newly emancipated black slaves.

13th trailer:



If you don't have a Netflix subscription, the streaming service has currently made the whole documentary available on YouTube:



Either way, we strongly recommend you watch the documentary to understand the social, cultural and political contexts to Letter to the Free.

Common - Letter to the Free blog tasks

Work through the following tasks to create a comprehensive case study for Common's Letter to the Free.

Social and cultural contexts

Read this Billboard interview where Common talks about Letter to the Free, political hip hop and contemporary American society. Use the article and the notes we have made in lessons (also available above) to answer the following questions on the social, cultural and genre contexts for Letter to the Free.

1) What is the 13th Amendment of the American Constitution?

2) What were the Black Codes?

3) Why do people suggest that the legacy of slavery is still a crucial aspect to American culture 150 years after it was abolished by the 13th Amendment?

4) Why was Ava DuVernay inspired to make the Netflix documentary 13th?

5) Focusing on genre, what was the most significant time period for the rise in political hip hop?

6) Common talks about other current artists that have a political or protest element to their music. Who are they? Are there any other hip hop artists that you are aware of that have a strong political element to their work?

Media Factsheet #223: Common's Letter to the Free

Read Media Factsheet #223: Common's Letter to the Free (you'll need your Greenford Google login to access this). Answer the following questions:

1) How is Letter to the Free described on the first page and what album is it from? 

2) How does the factsheet link Common to the mythology of the American Dream?

3) How does the factsheet apply Todorov's narrative theory to the song? Does this three-act structure also work for the video?

4) What does the factsheet suggest regarding the mise-en-scene, lighting and cinematography?

5) The factsheet offers some interesting ideas regarding representation and the positioning of the artist and musicians in the video. Summarise the main points here.

6) How can Paul Gilroy's ideas on diasporic identity and double-consciousness be applied to the Letter to the Free music video?

Close-textual analysis of the music video

Re-watch the music video several times to complete the following tasks in specific detail:

1) How does the Letter to the Free music video use cinematography to create meanings for the audience? (Camera shots and movement).

2) What is the significance of the constantly moving camera?

3) Why is the video in black and white?

4) How is mise-en-scene used to construct meaning for the audience - prison setting, costume, props, lighting, actor placement?

5) What is the significance of the floating black square motif? Discuss your own interpretations alongside Common's explanation of it in the Billboard feature linked above.

6) How does the video reference racism, slavery and the oppression of black culture? Make reference to specific shots, scenes or moments in the video.


Due date on Google Classroom