Common| Be

Be

Is a 2005 album by rapper Common, produced by Kanye West and J Dilla. The album reached a peak of #2 on the Billboard 200 pop albums chart, and became Common's second album to sell over 500,000 copies. Currently it has sold 800,000.Nevertheless, Entertainment Weekly's Tim Stack describes it as "a critical success without blockbuster sales."Common released Be under West's record label, GOOD Music, and West produced 9 of the 11 songs off the album ("Love Is..." and "It's Your World" are both produced by J Dilla). Containing 11 tracks and spanning about 42 minutes, Be is Common's shortest album. Common considers it and Like Water for Chocolate to be his favorite albums

Background

Be was touted as Common's comeback album after the commercially disastrous Electric Circus. His new alliance with Kanye West helped to spark public interest in the project. Nas's debut album Illmatic was the biggest influence on Be. The results show that Common was clearly aware, and perhaps agreeing, with the negative criticisms about Electric Circus. In comparison to that album, Be is lean, immediate, and commanding, yet also restrained in its musical ambitions. Many believe it to be his safest album. Of the reaction to the album, the rapper said: "I don't think Electric Circus was as focused. Though I'd done some progressive hip-hop, people know me as the b-boy. When I showed them something different, a different style of b-boy, there were like, "Hold up. You can be Afrocentric, but what's this rock shit that you're doing?"

Title significance

As Common said in a 2005 interview with SixShot.com: "I named it Be to be who you are man and be able to be in the moment and not try too hard. Be is another way of saying just do without trying hard, like I said natural and be true to the core of who you are and this album I wanted to just be and not just go and exist as just an artist not worried about the past."[4] In an interview with AllHipHop.com, Common reiterated the same point and denied that the album title stood for "Before Erykah."