COMMON
Be
(G.O.O.D./Geffen)

You release an album a few years back-an art thing, kind of, sprawling and chaotic and a little pretentious-that gets jumped on by folks who then go on to canonize an even more sprawling, chaotic, pretentious Andre 3000 album a year later. That same fall, Hova gives you some awkward love on wax, sayin' he'd really like to rap just like you if it, y'know, moved units. Now Jay's tight with this other dude from Chicago who got even more dap on the charts and from the press last year than the sub-Electric Circus "Hey Ya"-plus-filler disc did the year before, so you hook up with this Kanye cat. And you angle for a blockbuster a slightly different way: You do it subtle. West sands down '70s beats to a late-night throb that's slick but that still grinds: "Real People" brings the suavest sax riff since "T.R.O.Y."; a wash of bliss-out chimes turns "Go!" into the mellowest jump-up anthem around; layers of purring bass sustain through the album like a submerged organ chord. You fine-tune your lyrics, offsetting your sharp-toned personally and politically minded frustration with your most fluid phrasing yet-the street-struggle scenarios in the first verse of "The Corner" toy with the long-O vowel sound like a hood Electric Company routine-and deft philosophical acumen ("In the hood love, we was told to run from/That same hood where the guns sung/We holla love, hopin' it would come one," from "Love Is . . . ").
Result: a No. 2 Billboard debut and your first top 10. Guess this is that one day it all finally makes sense. NATE PATRIN