Kanye West “College Dropout” (2004)
Remember those days when Kanye wasn’t a Kardashian side-piece and a
walking conversation-starter around the danger of not managing mental
health issues. When we hadn’t even had the “whoa that was a bit crazy”
moment of him interrupting Taylor Swift at the VMAs.
Before all of that, and before Kanye even known as a rapper, he was a producer who
was building a reputation for himself. He specialised in a sound where
he manipulated old soul samples and arranged beats behind them.
West struggled to be taken seriously as a rapper and had a potential
major label deal shot down before it could even happen. He was
eventually signed to Roc-a-Fella Records and set about recording his
debut.
The production sounds good. From the beats and gospel choir of “Jesus
Walks” to the seamless blending of an RnB/soul vocal with West’s raps in
"All Falls Down".
I can understand the reticence about signing West for his lyrics
though. He grew up the son of an English professor who, for a time relocated to China to teach there, taking Kanye with her. She helped pay for his
first recording efforts. Not the standard gangsta/street résumé often
associated with the genre.
To my mind, that life could still have thrown up some interesting
stories/lyrics but instead Kanye often seems to rap about expensive
possessions, lash out at those he perceives as having wronged him, and
even falling back on the old standard ‘braggadocio’ track (“Breathe in,
Breathe out”).
If anything, I found the most interesting, endearing and honest track to be the album-closer “Last Call”
where Kanye spends 12+ minutes geeking out about his process, his
history, recounting (sometimes in excruciating detail) his path to
getting signed and making his record and generally just talking in a
direct and honest way. It's almost like an unannotated twitter feed.
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