Cell phones, the Internet, MP3 players and now Kanye West. Every so often something or someone emerges from the shadows, sparks an artistic or technological revolution and makes us forget what life was like before it arrived. West is the future of hip-hop, and today the producer/rapper unveils his latest upgrade, his second album , Late Registration .
Late Registration opens with the voice of a naysayer berating West, calling him a fourth-grader for his trademark bookbag before declaring, You ain't doing nothing else with your life over a piano instrumental of Natalie Cole's version of Someone That I Used to Love . This naysayer ends his lecture bellowing, Wake up, Mr. West.
Adorning the Cole sample with a snare beat and electric bass bounce, West moves into first song Heard 'Em Say with a soft flow reminiscent of OutKast on its hypnotizing double-album Speakerboxxx/The Love Below . Adding Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine's pained falsetto to the chorus makes the song a genre-crossing future megahit just waiting for its public reception. The beat is mesmerizing, but when West takes a witty jab at the title subject, it's the hip-hop equivalent of Clint Eastwood snarling, Make my day.
West finds the softer side of the usually fast-spittin' Paul Wall, smoothing out the Houston rapper's flow on Drive Slow, letting him rhyme about tricked-out cars over a sweet sax line by Hank Crawford. West tips his hat to Wall and his Houston hip-hop culture by screwing the song's conclusion to a slow-motion crawl. In places, Late Registration does have an everything-but-the-kitchen sink feel.
The '70s soul of My Way Home is a lost nugget from a never-made blaxploitation film but sounds like it would've been a better fit on an album by the track's guest rapper, Common. Bring Me Down also sounds like a centerpiece for a future album by cameo vocalist Brandy, but here she's only a secondary component to West's real-life rhymes. Still, the weakest tracks on Late Registration would be highlights for other artists.
West's head frequently swirls with epics like Diamonds From Sierra Leone, which pairs his and Jay-Z's rhymes with Shirley Bassey's James Bond theme Diamonds Are Forever. The rest of the hip-hop world is going to have to figure out how to turn it up a notch to keep up. A few years ago, West's name was best known as a producer for other artists like Jay-Z, Ludacris and Talib Kweli.
His hooks were hard but radio-ready, and when combined with clever samples (the Doors' Five to One on Jay-Z's Takeover in 2001 and Chaka Khan's Through the Fire for West's own debut single, Through the Wire ) were rivaled only by Eminem. His Grammy-winning, multiplatinum debut, The College Dropout, proved he could be as compelling with a microphone as he was at the soundboard.
News RSS