Check the stats: Pete Rock’s production has propelled million-selling, chart-topping, award-winning hits from Nas, Public Enemy, The Notorious B.I.G., and Kanye West to Mick Jagger, Mary J. Blige, Madonna, and Lady Gaga; and his signature style—collage compositions imbued with complex harmony and melody—makes him one of the most influential and innovative figures in the history of popular music. Multi-hyphenate rapper-actor-producer-author-activist Common has created an unparalleled body of work: 15 landmark albums, standout performances in films from “American Gangster” and “Just Wright” to “Selma” and “The Hate U Give,” and most recently on Broadway performing in “Between Riverside and Crazy” and coproducing the revival of “The Wiz.” His Primetime Emmy, three Grammys, and Oscar for Best Original Song mean that Common has now transcended his EGO and is already shopping for a T that fits.

Yet this producer and MC, though they traveled in the same creative circles and soul group for three decades, collaborated only two times—on a notable song they made together in 1994 and another in 1998. Given their independent, interstellar trajectories, there was no reason their paths should cross, until Common’s course was altered by the gravity of a big event: the Hip-Hop 50th Anniversary concert at Yankee Stadium in August 2023. Common was a featured performer, but his epiphany came as a fan: “I stood out in that crowd and watched for five-and-a-half hours. I've never done that in my life. Just to see EPMD, to see Lil Kim, to see Mobb Deep, Snoop, Ice Cube, Run DMC, Nas, Lauryn Hill, and Fat Joe. It just made me realize how much I love the art form. It made me want to rap.”

The next month, Common found himself in Pete Rock’s studio north of New York City. “We caught up with each other and I just started playing music,” says Pete. In those first moments, the two highly-favored sons of hip-hop realized they were coming from a similar place of gratitude and enthusiasm for the genre. Common recalls thinking: “We don't have to reach to make it sound like a throwback. We don't have to reach to try to make it sound like it's new and young. We’ve just got to be who we are and do what we love.” Then came Common’s second, more urgent realization: “I can't wait to leave here and go write.”

“We just became glued to each other,” Pete says. “The recording process wasn't long at all. It took about a couple of weeks to get the first five songs done. And the way we finished it was heroic.”

Though Pete experienced the pace of their work as brisk, Common remembers the time as one of intense deliberation. “It took time for Pete to dig into these records and find the right sample,” Common says. “Sometimes he would hook it up right then and there, but sometimes he waited ‘till he felt it was the right time and the right expression. And it's that time, that care, that diligence that comes through in the music that we make.”

Common wrote steadily, recording his vocals in the familiar sanctum of Electric Lady Studios. Several more visits, a back and forth of ideas over text and phone, and the 15 tracks of The Auditorium, Vol. 1 coalesced. “I was reaching for the euphoria of what we did in the 90s, but updated,” Pete says. “The feel of the album is 90s, but it's not 90s at all. It's new music.”