Common BE (Geffen)

It’s easy to hail Common’s sixth album as a return to form after 2002’s divisive Electric Circus. Fans and critics pelted the Chicago MC with more tomatoes than he deserved for that album’s spacy jams and carousel drones. Be’s sound, by contrast, is at once familiar from Common’s earlier work: ’70s-tinted smoothies of jazzy bass, honey-dipped strings, soulful horn bursts, and gliding keys. Still, the grooves are a little more processed than they once were, the dusty samples clipped and sped up a little more neatly. The funky edges have been smoothed by Roc-A-Fella superstar Kanye West, who produced all but two of Be’s 11 tracks. Before conquering MTV, West came up through the Chicago scene Common once dominated — his music is a sleek evolution of Common’s classic neo-soul, among other things — and that adds more than a little irony to their collaboration here. Fortunately, he keeps his outsized personality largely off stage, offering taut beats that showcase Common’s effortless talent for realer-than-real, socially conscious poetry. The first single, "The Corner," bumps like a boombox-toting prophet, and Common spins off his own Law & Order franchise with the slinky courtroom reversals of "Testify." Thirteen years into an influential career, Be shows there’s a lot left in Common.