30. Erykah Badu feat. Common – Love of My Life (an Ode to Hip-Hop) (2002)

Another duet between a male rapper and a female singer, but more mature, from two of the more serious artists of black music. Common was an underground rapper in the nineties, one of these rapper-poets who regarded their artform as a profound manifestation of African-American identity, and his records dealt earnestly with black history and culture, and criticized the more commercial and gaudy sides of hip-hop. Erykah Badu is hailed as the woman who brought the soul back into black pop, with her style that combined hip-hop, jazz and soul, and earned the label neo-soul. Together, they sing a rap-soul ballad that can be heard as a regular love song, but also as an ode to hip-hop, the music that filled their life with content and stood beside them in rough times. In a decade that saw hip-hop and R'n'B becoming so popular that even artists like Badu and Common got a lot of exposure, it was good to see that there was still someone fighting to preserve the mature side of the music.

On Common's part, in particular, the record is an important statement. In his famous 1994 record 'I Used to Love H.E.R', he declared a crisis in his love for hip-hop (also personified as a girl), because she started hanging out with gangsters, and became addicted to money, violence and drugs. Here, at a time when hip-hop was coming out of the gangsta-rap years, he reaffirms his love for "her". It was heartwarming to hear.