common knowledge is an independent laptop hip-hopper. He is more commonly known as ck--his albums, website, and iTunes all refer to him as ck, and common knowledge is merely what it stands for. Like AFI or KRS-One: though they stand for A Fire Inside or Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone, people still refer to them by the initials.

He employs his own brand of DIY ethics, as he self-produced, wrote, and recorded his entire debut album, Kind of a Big Deal, on his laptop while attending college at Columbia University. Currently residing in New York by way of San Francisco, he plays shows around New York, gaining new fans with each show he performs.

Following with his DIY ethics, he recognizes the need for artists to be more than just entertainers, and the capability for music to instigate social change. While other rappers spend their album advances on new rims and chains, ck hopes to achieve a universal accomplishment (over a personal one) with his musical work. In researching material for the album, he discovered that 25,000 people starve to death each day, and has consequently donated 100% of profits from his album sales to UNICEF to help end child starvation. On his website, www.purevolume.com/ck, he also established a link for people who would like to donate to UNICEF independently of purchasing the album, and has made the album available for a free download, proving that his work is about making people think, and not making the almighty dollar. He's known to be an advocate of and participant in the Creative Commons project.

His songs are poignant, and he approaches both the political--dealing with American ethnocentrism in "All the News Unfit to Print" and celebrity fascination in "US Weekly Subscribers vs. the Household Names"--and the personal, with "Atom Sparks," about his existentialist roommate and the autobiographical "Meet the Author." However, ck takes the most pride in being a story teller, as he narrates the true story of a teenage girl's experience doing Ecstasy in "Falling From Cloud Level" and the story of a car accident victim in "Every Twelve Minutes," narrated from the second-person.

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