Kanye West - Late Registration

[DudeAsInCool]

Thursday, Sep 1, 2005

By now, almost everyone is pretty aware of what Kanye West thinks of Kanye West. If he's not telling you he's the greatest thing ever to happen to music, he's displaying outrage at being underappreciated. But the reviews for his latest record, "Late Registration," will leave Kanye with little to complain about: It appears that the critics love him almost as much as he loves himself. Entertainment Weekly claims that the record "rarely fails to engross at every step," and Rolling Stone, who gives the album a five-star review (an honor usually reserved for Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen), calls it "an undeniable triumph, packed front to back, so expansive it makes the debut sound like a rough draft." Time puts West on the cover and calls the album "one of the better-sounding rap records in history." The L.A. Times gushesthat the record is "a 71-minute tour de force that mixes everyman tales with sonic invention -- a record that could change the musical framework of rap more than anything since 1992's 'The Chronic' by Dr. Dre" -- and that might be the mildest of the positive reviews. The ever hard-to-please indie kingpins at Pitchforkmedia seem hypnotized by West's new work, giving it a 9.5 (out of 10) and calling it "the year's most accomplished rap album, and in turn, he's done something that his heroes -- the Pharcyde and Nas, and father figure Jay-Z -- couldn't do: deliver on a promise the second time around." The surly New York Post gave the record four-stars, too, and called the record "a masterwork of concept, execution and production," and that "it should be the music's valedictorian in the class of 2005." Even the slights sound good: As Sasha Frere-Jones writes in the New Yorker, listening to "Late Registration" is "a bit like being chauffeured around in the fanciest car you can imagine by a driver who won't stop complaining about the mileage or the radio reception. You're annoyed, but at the same time you don't want the ride to end." Jon Pareles distances himself from the pack in the New York Times, criticizing Kanye by calling him a "hip-hop V.I.P." and suggesting that "a cool arrogance has crept into the songs." The Daily News wasn't thrilled by the album either, but called West a "fascinating figure," one that could never be considered "either simple or cliched." The Brits, meanwhile, are crazed over "Late Registration," with Q Magazine stating that "practically every track ... is a glorious pop song," and the Guardian describing West as being in "thrillingly subversive form, working in the production booth to undercut the tracks messages and shifting their meanings." But it's not as if Kanye really needed any encouragement -- he's already declared that he considers"Late Registration" to be "the best-produced record -- ever."

Thomas Bartlett, Salon.com

http://www.salon.com/ent/audiofile/index.html