Long hip-hop underground-beloved and finally mainstream-appreciated rapper Common returns to Honolulu to once again prove that modern-day gangsta rap is mostly soulless dreck.

Touring behind his critically fawned-over sixth album "Be," the 33-year-old New-York-by-way-of-Chicago-based Common makes the cause for intelligent flow Saturday at the Pipeline Cafe.

Here are 10 things you might want to know about Common.

1. His real name is Lonnie Rashid Lynn. After taking the MC name Common Sense and making the rounds of his Chicago hometown's underground hip-hop scene in the early 1990s, he channeled his then somewhat nasally but still silky flow into the promising debut "Can I Borrow A Dollar?" He shortened his moniker to Common for third album "One Day It'll All Make Sense" after he was sued by a ska band claiming the same name.

2. His musical influences are varied. Common has name-checked Marvin Gaye and Bob Marley as major influences. Others include Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and even Massive Attack. In hip-hop, A Tribe Called Quest "influenced me a whole lot because they were progressive with their music ... changing and evolving as artists ... coming from a different angle, coming from a different place, which was dope," Common told Yahoo! Launch in 2002. "I started getting into jazz, and Tribe was one of the groups that influenced that."

3. He can claim a bona-fide hip-hop feud in his past. Though known for keeping a public profile as mellow as his music, Common once found himself in a short-lived media war of words with rapper-turned-actor Ice Cube. Cube objected to "I Used to Love H.E.R.," a track from Common's 1994 sophomore disc "Resurrection," which lamented rap music's increasing embrace of violent and sexist subject matter. The animosity ended after both met with a peace-seeking Louis Farrakhan.

4. Jay-Z admires him ... to a point. On "Moment of Clarity," a track from Jay-Z's 2003 "The Black Album," he rapped, "Truthfully, I wanna rhyme like Common Sense/But I did five mil/I ain't been rhymin' like Common since." Common's biggest-selling album is 2000's "Like Water For Chocolate" at more than 750,000 copies. Its sales should be eclipsed any week now by his May release "Be." Common has called Jay-Z "one of the greatest."

5. He's out to fix hip-hop. "I definitely think it needs some repairing," Common told The Associated Press in May, referring to the current state of the genre. "I can say, as a fan, it ain't been satisfying and feeding my soul the way hip-hop has always done in the past. I think that I'm one person that can bring balance to it. Hip-hop has become so much of a business, so much of a hustle, that the art of it has lost its purity and innocence."

6. He won't apologize for "Electric Circus." After the deep spiritualism and intelligent socially conscious flow of "Like Water" gained him scads of critical praise and new admirers, Common alienated many in both camps with his everything-but-the-recording-studio-Pepsi-machine multi-genre manifesto "Electric Circus" in 2002. Record buyers bought just 293,000 copies. "I understood (their frustration)," Common told The Irish Times in July. "But I chose to do what I did with 'Electric Circus' because that's what worked for me. I never look back and think, 'Why did I do that?' or 'What would I change?' No way. 'Electric Circus' was me in 2002, and that's what people got."

7. He loves company. Even music critics who praise Common's work have griped about his penchant for inviting too many of his musician friends into the studio. Lauryn Hill, Prince, Mary J. Blige, Mos Def, Jill Scott and former girlfriend Erykah Badu have all spent time on his tracks. "Be" boasts guest appearances by Kanye West (who also co-produced the CD), John Legend and John Mayer.

8. He'll be on the road with Kanye West through the fall. Mainland bound? "Rash" and "Ye" — as friends-since-the-mid-'90s Common and West refer to each other — will hook up on West's "Late Registration" tour, which runs from Oct. 11 through Dec. 11 throughout North America. Also on the bill: Keyshia Cole and Fantasia.

9. The Common CDs you need to own. Start with his best, "Like Water For Chocolate"; find out how his skills grew on 1994's "Resurrection" and 1997's "One Day It Will All Make Sense." End with the fan and critic polarizing — but nevertheless relentlessly interesting and eclectic — "Electric Circus," just because.

10. He's rebuffed our interview requests twice. First, when he last played Pipeline Cafe in May 2003, and again this time around. There are no hard feelings, of course. Honest.

Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com.