Common on Slow Simmering Sprite Coke Backlash

For those who don't remember, which is probably most non-fanatical folk: Common did a Sprite Coke commercial a few years back with Mya, centered around a remake of Eugene Mcdaniels'/Roberta Flack's/Les McCann's "Compared to What." Quite a few fans were put off by this at the time, and I've seen it come up in a couple of places recently. So I asked him about it real quick while doing an interview you'll see soon elsewhere (couldn't fit it in the assigned piece cuz it had a very specific focus). Here's what he said:

One thing that I still see mentioned a lot is the Sprite Coke commercial you did with "Compared to What," people saying you shouldn't have done that. What's your your response to that?

Honestly I don't look back at nothing I did and say "man I shouldn't have done it." Cuz all of it is part of the process. I mean I can laugh at certain things and be like "damn why did i do that?" at that time, but you know.. if I hadn't done Electric Circus people wouldnt as excited about "Be" being what it is right now you know what I'm saying?

Do you understand what I mean? I mean, the point being it's all part of the journey. You go through those struggles, people see you go up and down, rollercoaster, and they can relate to it more. They're more connected to it cuz thy seen you. And they understood that I was being true to me, they know that "man, even if we didn't like that, that dude was being himself. He was being true to who he was at that time, and that's waht he wanted to create. He ain't just no ass-kissing ass artist, where he's gonna try to make anything, amd whoever's popular he's gonna do it with just to be a part of what's popping off. I ain't never been that type of artist.

So to you it's like somebody saying Malcolm shouldn't have done this or that in '62 or '63, when you're judging him by where is was at in '65, you gotta see that was a part of the path that took him to that?

Exactly bro, that's a great analogy.