Kanye West:
Late Registration

Release Date: 31 January 2005

Reviewed By: Matt Tomer

1. Wake Up Mr. West

2. Heard 'Em Say

3. Touch The Sky

4. Gold Digger

5. Skit #1

6. Drive Slow

7. My Way Home

8. Crack Music

9. Roses

10. Bring Me Down

11. Addiction

12. Skit #2

13. Diamonds From Sierra
Leone (Remix)

14. We Major

15. Skit #3

16. Hey Mama

17. Celebration

18. Skit #4

19. Gone

20. Diamonds From Sierra Leone

21. We Can Make It Better

22. Late

The Game - The Documentary
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Before we get ahead of ourselves with any and all Kanye-to-George Bush dissing and Grammy bitching, let's remember just how good Kanye West is.

It isn't often that artists of Kanye's status keep their head after reaching the pinnacle of success, and even rarer to continue in producing music at an equally high calibre. That said, Kanye can be named one of those few after ‘Late Registration’.

Plenty of fans cried foul (and continue to do so) when they caught wind of Fiona Apple maestro Jon Brion executive-producing West's sophomore release, and that will be for some the only detractor to the album, as he offers his wind and string influences to nearly every track.

This reviewer knows one thing: Jon Brion + Kanye = album of the year.

Brion adds that pinch of silky smoothness to Kanye's unquestionably groovy recipe behind the boards, making many of the tracks almost cinematic. Take ‘Diamonds from Sierra Leone’, for instance, the lead single off the album. The backdrop itself could hold its own no problem as an instrumental track, with it's majestic symphonic background and pounding piano strikes. Brion's strings mix with Kanye's beat perfectly, only for ’Ye to rip the track to shreds: "After debris settles and the dust get swept off/ Big K pick up where Young Hov left off/ Right when magazines wrote Kanye West off/ I drop my new sh*t, it sound like 'The Best Of'."

Kanye comes correct throughout the entire production, never wasting one line on any of the 16 masterfully crafted beats. The guests are impeccably chosen, from the crooning Jamie Foxx on ‘Gold Digger’ to Paul Wall's dirty southern drawl on ‘Drive Slow’. On ‘Heard 'Em Say’, Kanye teams up with Adam Levine of Maroon 5 fame on a “cartoonish” piano beat, and even offers up one of the finest musical backdrops on the entire album for Common to go for dolo on ‘My Way Home’.

Kanye not only picks the ideal guest emcees for his beats, but he even bridges the gap between Roc-A-Fella and Nas when the latter shows up on the fantastic ‘We Major’.

Beyond the music on the album, which is unparalleled on the commercial rap scene by any stretch of the imagination, Mr. West proves on ‘Late Registration’ that he is indeed the premier lyricist that everybody and your mama knows about. Continuing the school days concept started on ‘College Dropout’, he also hits on an incredibly diverse range of topics, from politics in the black community, to relationships, to personal problems - all topics that have been hit upon before, just not quite in the creative manner Kanye does on ‘Late Registration’.

Hip hop music has yet to distinguish a definitive figurehead in it's short history. Hip hop fans can't compare and contrast the way rock fans do with The Rolling Stones, or the way basketball junkies do with Michael Jordan. Is it fair to label an album a classic shortly after its release? Nobody had a problem doing that with ‘The Blueprint’. Is there anything controversial in giving a 20-something sensation the title of legend? Nobody had a problem doing that with Nas.

Who knows where Kanye will take hip hop with his subsequent albums. Based on the level of his success, it will either be remarkably forward, or devastatingly backward, but for now let's rest assured that we can listen to ‘Late Registration’ tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that…

Rating: 5 out of 5

Three Top Tracks:

Diamonds from Sierra Leone

My Way Home

Gone

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