i think someone like common is considered conscious in the way he relates to the mainstream. if the mainstream represents the middle then he is conscious by virtue of being left of them on the continuum of consciousness. you put him next to BBJAY (christian rapper) and maybe he seems not so conscious. a lot of times people put their own labels on folks and then expect others to follow the suit of the label they never asked for...and even if a man takes a name for himself his actions dictate what kind of man he is. puffy been talking about jesus for years but look at what his actions state...ultimately you just take the sum total of what a man has created and done and that is what he is...not some label. Therefore Common is a brother more in touch with his spiritual self then most people in his line of work who hasn't come so far as to shrug off words like nigga and bitch, not that is evidence of how far a man has come anyway...

I went into more detail in my post above...check #41.

h20

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"Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives-and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy. One proceeds from the other. Love is our response to our highest values-and can be nothing else. Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment, but self denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity or pain or weakness or sacrifice, that the noblest love is born, not of admiration, but of charity, not in response to values, but in response to flaws-and he will have cut himself in two. His body will not obey him, it will not respond, it will make him impotent toward the woman he professes to love and draw him to the lowest type of whore he can find. His body will always follow the ultimate logic of his deepest convictions; if he believes that flaws are values, he has damned existence as evil and only the evil will attact him. He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worth enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that his body has vicious desires of its own which his mind cannot conquer, that sex is sin, that true love is a pure emotion of spirit. And then he will wonder why lover brings him nothing but boredom, and sex-nothing but shame." -taken from 'Atlas Shrugged' by Ayn Rand