COURTESY PHOTO

Common,

The conscious rapper

The world was a very different place for Common two years ago.

When his last album, "Electric Circus," hit store shelves in 2003, the Chicago-born rapper was engaged to singer Erykah Badu and living a lifestyle lightyears away from his hip-hop contemporaries. And at the time, it didn't bother him one bit.

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His fans, however, were dumbfounded. What happened to the artist who put himself on the map with "I Used to Love H.E.R." in 1994 and proved his staying power with club-banger "The Light" in 2000? Did Erykah brainwash him?

COMMON answered those doubts with "Be," his sixth album, released in May. With just 11 tracks, it's a return to the gritty sound that made him a star, while still showing a sensitive side with rhymes about faith and fatherhood.

"I felt more than anything, this is some of my best work ever," he said in the July/August 2005 issue of URB Magazine. "I think the hunger came about from the lack of response to 'Electric Circus' and just people looking like 'Aww, Erykah changed dude.' That was the first time I had gotten ridiculed ... so it was a challenge for me."

Although the pair broke off their engagement shortly after "Electric Circus" came out, it didn't do much to silence his critics. Common still spent a lot of time in New York and Chicago, but he also began to find inspiration during visits to Los Angeles. He ended up moving there, living with producer Jay Dee and starting the groundwork for what would become "Be."

Being in L.A. cemented a newfound partnership between Common and fellow Chicagoan Kanye West. It was there that they originally recorded "The Food," a song they performed live on "Chappelle's Show" -- which was the version included on the album. Common also signed to West's label, G.O.O.D. Records, and agreed to let him serve as executive producer.

"It's really been a great growth period, a growing relationship, creatively," said Common. "Everything came out right, like the timing of it, me hooking up with Kanye. I had to get 'Electric Circus' out of my system, that was part of my evolution."

GROWING UP in a middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Common is familiar with both ends of the socio-economic spectrum and shows it with "Be."

Tracks like "The Corner" and "Chi-City" show the rough edge of where's he's from, while "Faithful," "Testify" and "They Say" provide more soulful introspection. After more than a decade in the game, he finally seems comfortable being called a "conscious" rapper.

"When they started saying that to me I was defensive," he said. "Then I started looking more throughout music history at the artists they call conscious, and I'm proud to be called that.

"You're looking at Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, KRS-ONE, that lineage right there? OK, call me conscious. When you look back in history, if I'm labeled as a conscious rapper it's going to mean something. More than the booty-shake rappers."