From CNN.com (click for entire article)

“I think hip-hop artists will have no choice but to talk about different things and more positive things, and try to bring a brighter side to that because, even before Barack, I think people had been tired of hearing the same thing,” he said in December. Read his December conversation with CNN

On Saturday, Common said he is already seeing signs that Obama is making a mark on a musical genre often vilified because of its focus on drugs, violence and the degradation of women.

“I also don’t find as much gangsta talk,” he said. “You see the whole chain-shining-and-rim era is gone. That’s like super-played out. Just to have that, I think, is part of the Obama effect.”

Also improving the industry, making it a more “independent-thinking entity,” he said, is that record labels and corporations hold less sway over the production process than they have in the past. Watch Common perform with The Roots »

“So you find these artists that are having that independent thinking of being able to go out and create for themselves,” he said.

Common, born Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr., believes hip-hop patrons want to hear more positive, upbeat messages in songs, and he believes the “conscious rapper” — that is, the more socially aware — is on the rise.

“People always want to feel better and be inspired,” he said. “Sometimes we need it. I think the conscious rapper will always be able to live and exist.”

Obama and the American spirit, he said, are prodding the movement along. Common said he hopes more rappers abandon vacuous materialistic ideals and the glorification of vices plaguing American communities — “and if whatever MC doesn’t, I will,” he warned.

“I think Obama is definitely bringing people to be able to inspire people to create for themselves,” he said. “What America was built on was being able to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to come in and use our resources to build for ourselves and our communities and build around that. We’re not going to depend on others.’

“I think that’s what hip-hop is starting to do to a certain extent. I think it’s a great thing.”

Do you really see this happening in Hip Hop? I think it definitely is in the scene that Common mostly frequents. It’s the backdrop to his own career. I don’t know however, if the radio crowd is ready yet for that CHANGE. Every time I venture to turn on the radio or when I’m working at my bar all I hear are things that I feel will continue to make Hip Hop seem irrelevant and not a genre to take seriously. Common said he’d carry the torch for as long as it takes but Hip Hop is bigger than just him. (And to be honest, UMC was not that hotness. So I need him to re-think the strategy a bit to convince me)

So what do you think? Are you hearing the Obama Effect in music today?

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