roheblius's Full Review: Late Registration [PA] [Digipak] [Limited] by Kany...
The limited edition isn't all that special. You just get the CD in a digipak with a special poster of Kanye trying to be sexy. Save the two bucks and get the regular version.
Kanye West's sophomore album is one of the best produced successive pieces of music that I've ever heard. His money in the bank style of using old soul records plus the sounds of Jon Brion's eclectic instrumentation equals production masterpiece. If Stevie Wonder and his synthesizer created a hip hop album in the 70's, this is what it would sound like. But of course, production is only half the battle. While Kanye has definitely improved on his rap game, he's still far worse than he thinks, and he's lucky the album has some reach, or else, it'd be his downfall.
When he released The College Dropout, it received such critical acclaim because people expected it to be a failure. While we all knew it would be fun musically, we all expected him to fall on his face when it came to lacing the tracks with his vocal instrument. But when he was better than poor and even more than average in instances, the album was probably applauded more than it should've been. It was a very solid album, but one that grew old after the luster was off. I think that Late Registration is a better overall product, but will suffer a similar fate. Once you find all the bells and whistles in the production, the only thing left is the lyrical content. And then you'll probably get a little bored. But for Kanye, that fate can't be bad because it will mean that he'll sell millions of albums.
If the man does one thing good, it is market himself. He's extremely confident, probably too confident, but I'd rather hear someone tell me that they were good, than be modest about their skills. In Touch The Sky, he does just that. He tells us that one day he'll touch the sky before he dies and it's because he's extra fly. It's the type of track that you'd expect Jay-Z to work and Kanye comes off just as cocky as you'd expect Young Hov to. Another masturbatory track is Bring Me Down featuring Brandy on the hook. Kanye basically slaps rappers on the wrists with a ruler for not being there for him when he didn't have a deal, but using him for his beats to help their careers. We Major featuring Nas and Really Doe is a little overbearing musically with it's over 7 minutes in length with a hook that is jaw droppingly bad, but Kanye does get props for having Nas on the track after getting Jay-Z to guest on the remix to Diamonds From Sierra Leone. Kanye's conflict with his blood diamonds contradiction features good storytelling, even if Jay's verse features about 15 self high fives. But the track is a banger and you really can't go wrong with putting Jay-Z on a track.
Kanye's growth as an artist is apparent not only by using Brion as a co-executive producer, but also by branching outside of hip hop. On Heard 'Em Say, he grabs Adam Levine, better known as the dude from Maroon 5 to sing in his falsetto. Kanye uses the song which is lightly produced, though features addictive piano play, to launch out against societal ills that he sees. Another song that he politically speaks out in is Crack Music featuring The Game in one of the more underutilized hip hop cameos in history. I would've missed him if he wasn't credited. I actually recognized the sample of a Biggie Smalls grunt before I recognized The Game on this song.
The most fun I've had all year with a song is Gold Digger featuring Jamie Foxx doing his Ray Charles impersonation. The song also samples Charles' I Got A Woman. It's silly, yet you'll be singing "Get down girl, go'n ahead get down" to nobody in particular and even single folks will be screaming, "we want pre-nup, we want pre-nup!". Roses and Hey Mama are also fun, though very personal, but not to the point where he changes the tone of the album. And with his cutesy style rhymes, you can't really take him completely serious. Especially when he asks the nurse who asks him to sign some autographs if she's smoking the reefer. Drive Slow featuring Paul Wall and GLC takes you back to Rappin' 4Tay and Tupac Shakur seemingly taking from Player's Club and Shorty Wanna Be A Thug respectively. It's the most different sounding song on the album, which isn't all that bad considering it gives you a breather from the xylophones.
Late Registration is a fantastic musical journey that had all the intention of being a candidate for album of the year. And while I might have been a little easy on Kanye's rhyming style from his first album, I was probably a little too hard on him with this album. The album is a fantastic good time, but in order to stomp with the big dogs, you gotta speak like the big dogs.
Still, it's a four star album in my book, even with all his vocal shortcomings, and that should tell you how well the production is. Damn near perfect.
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