By Leor Galil
Article Reprint
Last night Common and producer Twilite Tone participated in a Chicago Ideas Week event called “Keeping the Peace: Music, Art and the End of Violence,” which was a discussion about the potential for art to curb gun violence. Earlier that day Twilite Tone debuted a track called “Put the Guns Down,” which features Common and a bevy of fantastic local MCs, some with a sizable national following, others that deserve one, and all of whom have appeared in the Reader: Katie Got Bandz, Saba, Tree, Noname Gypsy, Lil Herb (aka G Herbo), Treated Crew’s Mic Terror and Nick Jr., and King Louie, who leads things off and provides the song’s hook. Executive producer John Monopoly helped rope together these disparate local voices to rap on Twilite Tone’s bleak, creeping instrumental—he punctures the air with percussive stabs, a forlorn piano, and a down-pitched vocal sample repeating the word “guns.”