Kanye West Appreciation/Hype Thread (Late Registration - Aug 30th)

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Fresh Prince said:
If you say so. I'll just take the song as it is.
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lol, the whole song is ignorant in itself. he brings up issues through sarcasm while it being somewhat of a satire kinda.

i guess it will go over the masses heads tho.
 
Forget all your problems just get smashed etc -is that it? Like every other party song?
The only noteworth issue he brings up is unwanted children issue.

I actually understood what Talib's use of sarcasm with Gun Music.
 
Fresh Prince said:
Forget all your problems just get smashed etc -is that it? Like every other party song?
The only noteworth issue he brings up is unwanted children issue.

I actually understood what Talib's use of sarcasm with Gun Music.
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like i said, it will go over the head of the masses, yourself included.

ignorance is bliss. ahhhh
 
so i was listening to both albums today, and damn, i'd have to say CD has been dethroned, and i STILL can't decide what track is the best on LR...

i also finally listened to the Cowboy Troy album today... COMEDY GOLD
 
Roses is such a beautiful track. I think it might be my favorite behind "Gone". I can't put this album down. It's 2 A.M. and I'm finding excuses to listen to it more....
 
Iamthegamer said:
Roses is such a beautiful track. I think it might be my favorite behind "Gone". I can't put this album down. It's 2 A.M. and I'm finding excuses to listen to it more....
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yea after finally being able to hear the album in its entirety, roses and hey mama are probably my favorite tracks next to diamonds. the rest of the album is great as well but those 3 really stand out for me.
 
I didn't like the album which was not a surprise. Only 2 or 3 cuts I thought were good, but I didn't think they were great. He has a simple rhyme style that's basic (I call it regular rappin', nothing special), and talks about shit I don't care about too often. I'm really being nice here since this is an appreciation thread...this is just not the brand of rap I like. Didn't like the music production either, on the whole. I know it's not for me and I move on. He does have balls for having almost no club bangers on the album, as most albums have 90% wannabe single/club hits which just utterly ruins most albums.
 
I'm watching his interview right now on MTV. Deep stuff. What really caught me off guard is that Portishead and Fiona Apple are two of his favorite artists of all time. He got Jon Brion to produce his album because of how much he loves Fiona Apple. Pretty cool.

I listened to the album once so far, a quick run through. Some songs just don't catch my attention, but I'm not passing it off. It usually takes me 2-3 listens to 'get' an album.
 
Listened to it again: I like only 3-4 songs. Some of the songs are just so souless and have no solid rhythm driving them. Kanye's producing prowess is definitely missing on nearly 3/4 of this record.

Shame. I thought I'd change my mind about the album seeing as how when I was listening to it yesterday I didn't have the volume loud enough...nah. It's lacking.
 
AlphaSnake said:
Listened to it again: I like only 3-4 songs. Some of the songs are just so souless and have no solid rhythm driving them. Kanye's producing prowess is definitely missing on nearly 3/4 of this record.

Shame. I thought I'd change my mind about the album seeing as how when I was listening to it yesterday I didn't have the volume loud enough...nah. It's lacking.
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Production wise, this LP is perfect.
 
Agent Icebeezy said:
Production wise, this LP is perfect.
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Depends on your personal definition of the word. To me, unique bass beats are a part of production and so is a general rhythm that solidifies a flow (which Kanye has down). Both parts are missing, imo.
 
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Sunday, Aug. 21, 2005
Why You Can't Ignore Kanye
More GQ than gangsta, Kanye West is challenging the way rap thinks about race and class—and striking a chord with fans of all stripes

By JOSH TYRANGIEL / PRAGUE

The first time Kanye West asked the folks at Roc-A-Fella records to let him rap, there was an uncomfortable silence. As a producer, West had churned out hits for Roc-A-Fella's intimidating trio of stars—Jay-Z, Cam'ron and Beanie Siegel—and earned praise for his great ear and tireless ethic. But in 2002 the idea that someone like West could be a successful rapper was faintly absurd. "Kanye wore a pink shirt with the collar sticking up and Gucci loafers," recalls Damon Dash, then Roc-A-Fella CEO. "It was obvious we were not from the same place or cut from the same cloth." Says Jay-Z: "We all grew up street guys who had to do whatever we had to do to get by. Then there's Kanye, who to my knowledge has never hustled a day in his life. I didn't see how it could work."

Roc-A-Fella wasn't the only label to pass on Kanye (pronounced Kahn-yay; it means "the Only One" in Swahili) West. Executives at record companies large and small failed to reconcile West's appearance and demeanor with their expectations of what a rapper should be. They had no idea how to market him. "It was a strike against me that I didn't wear baggy jeans and jerseys and that I never hustled, never sold drugs," says West, 28, who grew up in suburban Chicago and often dresses as if he's anticipating an acceptance letter from Exeter. "But for me to have the opportunity to stand in front of a bunch of executives and present myself, I had to hustle in my own way. I can't tell you how frustrating it was that they didn't get that. No joke—I'd leave meetings crying all the time."

When West finally got a deal (in the end, Roc-A-Fella overcame its institutional bias against Polo shirts), he shattered the myth that he was too soft, too weird and too bourgeois to fit the mold of a platinum-selling rapper. His 2004 debut album, The College Dropout, went nearly triple platinum, topped all the major critics' polls, earned 10 Grammy nominations and made rap accessible to audiences that hadn't paid attention in years. "That record restored my faith in hip-hop," says Jamie Foxx, who lent comic vocals to West's No. 1 hit Slow Jamz.

West is hardly the first person to bring a Buppie sensibility to rap.

In the '80s, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, A Tribe Called Quest and LL Cool J successfully wove suburban perspectives into rebellious music, but when gangsta rap arrived, nuance was smothered by a blanket of extreme poses. Tupac Shakur, once a student at the Baltimore School for the Arts, died with thug life tattooed across his torso. On The College Dropout, West found a way to bridge the divide without self-destruction. His follow-up, Late Registration, arrives Aug. 30 and continues to mix race and class with beats and melodies. It is widely expected to be the biggest-selling record of the year—1.6 million copies will be shipped to stores for its first week of release.

The College Dropout was 76 minutes of someone cramming every thought he'd ever had about himself into rhyme. It was immaculately produced, but what made it compelling was the contradictions. The song Jesus Walks mixed spirituality with skepticism and rap with gospel. All Falls Down slammed the "single black female addicted to retail" but concluded with West admitting, "I wanna act ballerific, like it's all terrific/ I got a couple past due bills, I won't get specific/ I got a problem with spending before I get it/ We all self-conscious, I'm just the first to admit it." Throughout, West careered between the Protestant ethic and street fantasies, revealing himself to be wise and stupid, arrogant and insecure, often in the same breath. But by baring his flaws and being self-critical—and daring listeners to do the same—he created a fresh portrait of African-American middle-class angst, and you could dance to it.

It didn't take long for The College Dropout to develop coattails.

Fashion-wise, you may have been blinded recently by the swarm of pink Polo shirts, while on the charts, West's friends John Legend, an R&B singer with a University of Pennsylvania degree, and Common, a whip-smart and austere Chicago rapper, both had sales spikes. West's Late Registration should push things further. "I didn't want to play it boring and safe," says West while sitting in the balcony of a 14th century church in Prague, one of the locations he hand-picked for the video of Diamonds from Sierra Leone, the Shirley Bassey- based first single from Late Registration. "I also didn't want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they're even scarier than first ones."

Musically, West took the extraordinary risk of fiddling with his sound by asking Jon Brion, known mostly for his collaborations with the talented but flaky Fiona Apple, to co-produce. Lyrically, he continues to stomp taboos and create a witty catalog of his schizophrenia. If that makes him sound like Eminem, it's worth noting that West is usually incorrigible like a puppy, not a pit bull. "His music is about being human," says West's obviously biased mother Donda, who recently retired from her post as chair of the English department at Chicago State University. "It's like Walt Whitman. 'Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.'" West's old boss, Damon Dash, puts it a little differently: "He combines the superficialness that the urban demographic needs with conscious rhymes for the kids with backpacks. It's brilliant business."

That the "urban demographic" needs "superficialness" could be read as two euphemisms away from racism. But Dash, an African American who thinks exclusively in shades of green, is merely letting the world in on what's accepted as social fact by much of the record industry.

Hip-hop was born in the '70s as party music and evolved in the '80s into that rarest of pleasures—socially relevant party music. But in the mid-'90s, the genre came to be dominated by people like Snoop Dogg (sample track: Murder Was the Case), the Notorious B.I.G. (Ten Crack Commandments) and Jay-Z (Rap Game/Crack Game)—excellent rappers with a shrewd eye for journalistic detail but, to put it bluntly, ex-drug dealers. "Rap changed a lot in the last few years," notes comedian and hip-hop fan Chris Rock, who says he listens to The College Dropout while he writes jokes. "In the early days, the best rappers weren't necessarily from the hood. Run-D.M.C. was from Hollis . Eric B and Rakim were from Long Island. They lived next to the hood."

When the hard stuff sold well (hard stuff, in any medium, always does), the record labels, never bastions of original thought, asked for more. Soon rappers who had never got a speeding ticket were referring to themselves as pimps and hustlas, and what had started as ghetto reporting with a touch of caricature metastasized into caricature with no tether to reality. The result was a torrent of albums about the joys of acquisitiveness (bling, if you must), consequence-free violence and compliant women.

All that was complicated by—and you had to know it was coming—race.

Statistics consistently show that 70% of hip-hop is consumed by young white audiences, but a century of anecdotal evidence is similarly irrefutable: white kids think it's cool to be black, which means the other 30% sets the trends and runs the show. With the market mired in thuggery, African-American consumers' could choose to: a) propagate a nasty stereotype of themselves for white kids to pin their libidinous fantasies on; b) not care; c) start patronizing the danger-free, supernice, superboring rappers at the liberal humanist fringe; or d) give up.

"I stopped listening to hip-hop 10 years ago," says Darryl McDaniels, the D.M.C. in Run-D.M.C. McDaniels points out that Run-D.M.C. rhymed about everything from materialism (My Adidas) and higher education ("I'm D.M.C. in the place to be/ I go to St. John's University") to Santa Claus (Christmas in Hollis). "We weren't choirboys, but we had multiple points of view. This past decade it seems like hip-hop has mostly been about parties and guns and women. That's fine if you're in a club, but from 9 a.m. till I went to bed at night, the music had nothing to say to me. So I listened to classic rock." What brought McDaniels back from his diet of John Mellencamp and Bob Seger was Jesus Walks. "When I heard it, I just stopped in my tracks," says McDaniels. "I thought, 'This song is about everything! This feels alive!'"

Jesus Walks is one of those miraculous songs that you hear for the first time and immediately look forward to hearing on a semiregular basis for the next 30 or 40 years. It's built on a booming gospel sample from the Arc Choir and one of West's typical contradictions, his admission that he's not particularly religious and his anger that songs with Jesus in the title don't get played on the radio. Che Smith, a friend of West's from Chicago who raps as Rhymefest, gave West the sample, wrote some of the first verse and receives half the song's royalties. "But Jesus Walks is all Kanye," says Smith. "When he wrote, 'To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers/ Even the strippers/ Jesus Walks for them!', I said, 'Wait, it doesn't matter what you do at all? You can keep doing bad things, and in the end it's all good? Don't we need to take a stand?' And he said, 'It's about imperfection. Everybody can relate to that.' Damn if he wasn't right."

West is sometimes credited with revolutionizing hip-hop, but this doesn't quite fit. Revolutions require moral certainty, and West's default position is doubt. What he's up to is more like a reformation. "I'm pretty calculating," he says, standing before the baroque altar of Prague's Church of St. Simon and Juda. "I take stuff that I know appeals to people's bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides." As an example, he cites a snippet of Diamonds from Sierra Leone about his rise to fame: "'Life movin' too fast, I need to slow down/ Girl ain't give me no ass, she need to go down.' All right, that's really crass, right? Really bogus. So what comes next? 'My father been said I need Jesus/ So he took me to church, let the water wash over my Caesar' . I go back and forth all the time."

In music, West's juxtapositions make your head nod. In life, they can sometimes make it spin. "I came to Prague for this church," West says in the near whisper he uses when not standing in front of a microphone. "I scouted it, researched it. Ever since my accident"—in 2002 he crashed his car and cracked his jaw in three places--"I've had a thing about angels, and you can't get statues of angels or architecture like this in the States." One minute later, he stands in front of a video camera, sets his legs as if he's about to throw a punch, and barks, "'Sup, mtv. We in Pray-Goo for the Diamonds video!" Then West marches over to video director Hype Williams: "Those girls we saw at the club last night, we need them. The ones with the double Fs." Asked afterward which performance was more real, he looks hurt. "Both," he says.

Which brings us to race's kissing cousin: class. Communities that have been discriminated against are hardly free from prejudice.

"Black people can be the most conservative, the most discriminating," says West. "Especially among ourselves. It wasn't white people who said all black men have to wear baggy jeans." Bougie is a common African-American term for middle class; it is not used kindly.

West—who has a habit of beginning sentences with the preamble, "Rappers say this all the time," as if he were not one of the world's most popular rappers but a kid deconstructing one—is quite bougie.

Raised in the Chicago neighborhood of South Shore by his mother (his parents divorced when he was 3, and he spent summers with his father Ray, a former Black Panther who is now a Christian marriage counselor), West went to good schools, received art and music lessons and, when he was 10, spent a year in Nanjing, China, where his mother was a visiting professor. Like many suburban kids, he developed a passion for hip-hop that was only enhanced by his awareness that the genre often romanticized bad behavior. His mother did not exactly approve; when West went to concerts, even in his late teens, she often followed. "He maybe doesn't know this," says Donda West, "but I was at a lot of those shows, watching him."

Early on, West knew he wanted to be a rapper; at 13 he made an amateur recording about green eggs and ham. But his parents had other ideas. "My plan was that he would get at least one degree, if not several," says his mom, the Ph.D. After Kanye graduated from high school in 1995, he enrolled in art school and took an English class for a year at Chicago State before finally confronting his parents.

After months of lengthy conversations, West persuaded them to let him try rapping and producing for a year. Recalls Donda: "He said, 'Mom, I can do this, and I don't need to go to college because I've had a professor in the house with me my whole life.' I'm thinking, This boy is at it again. He always could twirl a word."

During the day, West worked as a telemarketer to pay the $200 a month his mother demanded in rent. At night he honed his delivery and made beats for other rappers. Within a few months he had his first major sale--$8,000 from a Chicago rapper named Gravity. "That's when I knew the one-year plan was out the window," says West. Soon he was making beats for Bad Boy Records' rapper Mase, and in 2001 West produced several tracks for Jay-Z's groundbreaking album The Blueprint, using samples of old songs (the Doors' Five to One, the Jackson 5's I Want You Back) sped up until they sounded like Chipmunks cover versions. (West admits he took the idea from the Wu-Tang Clan's The RZA; he insists on giving credit where it's due.) Still, he couldn't persuade Jay-Z, Damon Dash or anyone else to take him seriously as a rapper.

In October 2002, West, exhausted from hours spent in a recording studio, fell asleep behind the wheel of his Lexus and nearly died.

"He called me from his hospital bed with his jaw wired shut and asked for a drum machine," says Dash. "That impressed me." Three weeks after the accident, with his jaw still shut, West went to a studio and mumbled Through the Wire, a song about the crash built on the accelerated chorus of Chaka Khan's Through the Fire. It was dramatic and funny ("I drink a Boost for breakfast, a Ensure for dizzert/ Somebody ordered pancakes, I just sip the sizzurp"), and it finally persuaded Roc-A-Fella to move ahead with a Kanye West album. "Death," says West, "is the best thing that can ever happen to a rapper. Almost dying isn't bad either."

In its first week of release, The College Dropout sold 441,000 copies—an extraordinary number for a debut—and entered Billboard's album chart at No. 2, behind velvet colossus Norah Jones. Immediately West started grumbling about disrespect. He complained about ambivalent words in glowing reviews, whined to his label about a lack of promotion, suggested that magazines pay to put him on their cover (in case you're wondering: uh, no) and, most famously, walked out of the American Music Awards when he lost Best New Artist to country singer Gretchen Wilson ("I was the best new artist this year, so get that other bull____ out of here"), a gesture made even more obnoxious by the fact that Wilson was as much a rebel in her field as West was in his (see page 66). In all, he acted with the maturity and grace traditionally associated with rap stars.

Like most people who've ever stared into a camera lens or picked up a microphone, West is better at integrating his flaws into his art than into his personality. As he says on the new song Touch the Sky, "I'm trying to right my wrongs/ But it's funny the same wrongs help me write this song." Still, his behavior during awards season was reminiscent of the video-set collision between church architecture and large breasts. It seemed a little forced. "He's trying to change this genre, and in order to do that he's got to get people to listen to his music," says a fervent McDaniels. "They've gotten so used to hardness, to stupidity, that if he has to engage in a little of that to be relevant, so be it."

West won't cop to exaggerating his petulance. "I was just trying to create some entertainment," he says, adding that his act will probably tone down in the future because "people mature" and "I have a lot more to lose." In another context he admits to a contradiction truly worthy of him: in his attempt to shatter the rapper stereotype, he's sometimes willing to behave stereotypically. "Take the word nigga," West says. "I don't like the word, and I made an attempt to change it on this new song Crack Music"—an indictment of drug abuse.

"I tried saying, 'This is crack music, homey,' but it just didn't have the same impact. My mom's a teacher, and I'm kind of a teacher too. But the hood, the suburbs, mtv and bet are my classrooms, and I know how to talk to my class." The word nigga appears multiple times on the album.

On Late Registration, the syllabus returns to Whitman's Song of Myself. There are skits ridiculing the impoverished members of a made-up black fraternity (Broke Phi Broke), while the song Gold Digger pleads with women to stand by working-class men because "He got that ambition baby look at his eyes/ This week he mopping floors next week it's the fries."

Contradictions abound on the CD, but what you notice most is the music. West is a master of samples and drum loops, and co-producer Brion can play anything with strings. Together they make one of the better-sounding rap records in history. Diamonds from Sierra Leone features the Bassey sample, keyboards stolen from a Vegas lounge act and a horn section fit for a coronation. Gone opens with an Otis Redding sample (from It's Too Late) and a two-note piano melody. Then there's a thwack of percussion and what seems like eight different string sections playing disciplined countermelodies that change with each verse to modify the vocals. In the middle it slows to a crawl for a few seconds, just because. At the end, West is justified in boasting, "Maybe you can be my intern and intern/ I show you how to cook up summer/ In the winter."

One night while making the record, Brion says, he and West got in a state of giddy exhaustion unique to people who spend hours a day for months on end in a windowless recording studio. "We had just been talking about something, and there was one of those weird, intense lulls," says Brion. "Kanye looks at me, and he goes, 'You know that saying You can't be all things to all people? Well, seriously, why not? I want to be all things to all people.'" Brion waited for a moment, then burst into laughter. "I knew he wasn't kidding, and he's smart enough to know that wanting to be loved by everybody is probably really bad for your mental health, but at the same time his point was, you know, why not try?" You never know. He just might succeed
 
Himuro said:
And don't even get me on the PRODUCTION. HOLY SHIT, this album has the best production on an hip hop lp I have ever heard. Jesus, I want to go listen again. I need the instrumentals to this album.
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sorry bro, dre got him beat on production on his lp, but other then that, can't think of any other lp to be so good lol
 
Himuro said:
I'm disappointed there was no Mos Def, Common, or Kweli though. :( But the amount of guests compared to the first album is amazing. There's hardly any at all, while on Dropout, there's a guest like every song.
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Common is on the album
 
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9023092/site/newsweek/

By Lorraine Ali
Newsweek

Aug. 29 - Sept. 5, 2005 issue - Some men tattoo their girlfriends' names on their arms. Others prefer a skull and crossbones. But rapper Kanye West always has to be different. The faded blue ink on his forearm is a list of his favorite songs: "You Made Me" (by Kanye West). "My Life" (by Kanye West). "Izzo" (by ... Kanye West). "Yes, all songs by me," he says, taking a puff of his cigar and adjusting his sunglasses. "My grandfather told me shy is next to stupid. He said stand up and celebrate when you're having a good time and don't ever overcompensate for those who are intimidated by you. So here I am, celebrating."

Kanye West certainly has reason to pop a champagne cork. At 28, he's produced stellar records for figures ranging from Jay-Z to Alicia Keys, founded his own label, broke artists like John Legend and dropped his own Grammy-winning debut, 2004's "College Dropout." His single "Jesus Walks" blew holes in the notion that rap and religion just don't mix. He rhymed about his faith over music that felt more like a sophisticated soundtrack than a Power 106 hit. That single won the rapper respect (and envy) among his peers and a 2005 Grammy for best rap song. But West was just getting started.

His new record, "Late Registration," is the most dynamic and original album of the fall—maybe even the year. The first singles off the CD (in stores Aug. 30)—the refined remake of Shirley Bassey's "Diamonds Are Forever" (titled "Diamonds of Sierra Leone") and the prenuptial anthem "Golddigger"—are classic examples of his range, from the classy to the crass. And the rest of the CD? "Just imagine someone rapping over 'Star Wars,' then add a beat to it. That's my album," he says. His co-producer, Jon Brion, a man known for moody orchestrations for eccentrics like Fiona Apple, had never worked with a hip-hop artist before. "I'm sure everyone thought he was making a dangerous left turn by working with me," says Brion. "But Kanye has always challenged the advice of the music industry, and it hasn't exactly hurt his career." West was right again. The CD is layered with disparate yet somehow simpatico elements—cinematic orchestration, catchy bass-laden beats, dusty R&B samples—plus plenty of social commentary and sharp bits of humor. On "Crack Music," he raps about the parallels between bad drugs and bad hip-hop: "We invested in that. It's like we got Merrill Lynched and we been hanging from the same tree ever since." The record is an ingenious balance of arty intentions and mainstream savvy.

"I'd like to add that I think this is the best-produced record—ever," says West. So you just want to slap him, right? But for all his bravado, he still relies on the opinions of others. When a small group of people were listening to his new CD in his dressing room during a recent video shoot, he nervously hovered outside the door, then popped back into the room before it was even over: "I saw you talking over the first verse of 'Dear Mama'," he said. "You need to hear it again, because you may have missed something." Later, he quietly grilled each listener: "What do you think? I mean, really, really think?"

West had his first taste of fame at 10 when his mother, an English professor, moved the family from Chicago to China for a yearlong exchange program. "People used to come up to me and rub my skin to see if any color would come off," he recalls. "They'd never seen a black person. Everywhere I'd go, I was surrounded by a crowd." Back in Chicago, West was placed in gifted classes, and by seventh grade he was designing his own videogames on a $500 home computer. After creating the backdrop and characters, he got hooked on making the music. Four years later, West would sell songs to underground rappers at $250 a pop. "It was money on top of the paycheck from my telemarketing job, you know, convincing people to buy insurance for their Montgomery Ward products." He landed a full scholarship at the American Academy of Arts in Chicago, left to major in English at Chicago State, then dropped out to pursue his budding music career. After he coproduced a song on Mases's 1997 CD "Harlem World," he gradually became the producer du jour, working with Janet Jackson and Lauryn Hill, among others. He signed on for his own album with Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella label in 2002 and, three years later, landed 10 Grammy nominations. Now he's CEO of GOOD Music (an acronym for Getting Out Our Dreams), with hit records by Legend and Common, and, of course, his own clothing line, Mascott. Next up: he hopes to create a comedy show similar to Dave Chappelle's.

Jesus may still walk with West, but these days so do a bodyguard, a publicist, a manager, his DJ and the occasional video hoochie. His is not exactly a pious life, but like most good artists, West is full of contradictions. The video he directed for "Diamonds" is about the slaverylike conditions in Africa's diamond mines—yet he wears a giant rock in his ear. He's one of the few rappers to speak out against homophobia on MTV, but he disrespects women in his songs and videos. He raps about his Christian faith on one song, then talks about his sex addiction on the next. "I definitely have conflicts," he says. "Am I able to walk like I'm Jesus Christ? No, but I do a lot more right than wrong. From what I hear, all sins are equal in God's eye. But I believe some sins are worse than others." He smiles at the girl from the video. She smiles back. "That's where the concepts that I touch on all the time come from—that fight between good and evil within yourself."

It's hard to imagine when West fits those internal battles into his schedule. He's constantly moving to stay ahead of the curve. "I always wanted to be the person who shows up at school with the new [Air] Jordans first," he says. "It doesn't matter if you're the second person with the shoes. You have to be first, or no one will remember you." It's unlikely West will let us forget him any time soon.
 
http://www.detnews.com/2005/events/0508/19/E06-285250.htm

Thursday, August 18, 2005

West treats crowd to 'Late Registration'

Grammy winner looks outside of hip hop to create much anticipated sophomore album.

By Adam Graham The Detroit News
Image
Reed Saxon / Associated Press

Inside a nondescript office building in Troy Wednesday evening, music's hottest entity, Grammy-winning rapper-producer Kanye West, was on hand to unveil the year's most-anticipated album, West's sophomore effort "Late Registration."

"This album will change the game," the Chicago native confidently told a group of more than 40 industry professionals, DJs and journalists assembled to hear the record, the follow-up to last year's triple-platinum "The College Dropout."

"Brace yourself, I don't want anybody to get hurt," he said as he started into the album's first track, "Heard 'Em Say."

Immediately, it was clear people were feeling it, but no one was digging it more than West himself: He nodded his head throughout, mouthed the words to "Touch the Sky," raised his fist in the air during the pounding "Crack Music," formed a celebratory diamond sign with his hands during "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" and stood up and rapped along to the triumphant, genre-bending "We Major," which went over so well he decided to play it twice.

He even kept his cool when the sound system went dead during "Drive Slow."

The room burst into applause several times, but West repeatedly shushed them, so they wouldn't miss a moment of his work.

West, 27, recorded the album with producer Jon Brion, best known for his work with Fiona Apple (of whom West is a huge admiror) and his film scores ("Magnolia," "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind").

In a Q&A session afterwards, West made it clear he looked outside of hip-hop for inspiration for "LateRegistration," saying he and Brion spent hours in the studio listening to old Beatles and Jackson 5 records.

There are enough musical flourishes on "Late Registration" to make any audiophile's ears perk up, which is not surprising, considering West and Brion's influences: There's pipe organs on "We Belong," a 20-piece orchestra on "Gone," a harpsichord on "Diamonds" and a string section on "Hey Mama."

An impressive list of guests drops in on "Late Registration," including Jay-Z, Nas, Jamie Foxx and Patti Labelle. But there are two people West has never worked with, whom he says it's his dream to collaborate with in the future: Lauryn Hill and Eminem.

West said "Late Registration" cost $2 million to make and needs to sell 2.6 million copies to break even. He even lamented the security surrounding the album, which is under lock and key until its Aug. 30 release.

"I think downloading is the best thing ever. I'm like, 'When's my bootleg coming out?' " he said. "I want people to hear the music!"

But as cocky as he is -- "I would hate to not be me!" he bragged at one point, later adding he feels sorry for other people who aren't him -- he knows he has room to improve, and says he plans on taking poetry lessons to bone up on his lyric-writing skills before writing his next album, which is tentatively due next year.

Before that, he has plans to hit the road with a 20-piece orchestra. He says he's playing some dates with U2 later this year, and he's been talking to Coldplay's Chris Martin about hooking up on the road.

But currently, the focus is on "Late Registration."

"Iwanted to make an album where there was no fast-forward material on it," he said, adding -- in typical West fashion -- he's confident he's made the album of the year, an "uncriticizable" achievement deserving of the top honor at next year's Grammy Awards.

But if he were to lose, "I'd be happy to lose to System of a Down," he said of the Armenian-American metal maniacs, whose "Mesmerize" was released in May.

"That's my favorite album of the year so far," he says.
 
From MTV.com

Kanye's Co-Pilot, Jon Brion, Talks About The Making Of Late Registration





The streets can't wait for ... er, Jon Brion?

When word got out that West had enlisted the esoteric composer/producer to collaborate on his second LP, Late Registration, some fans scratched their heads — "Who??" —




"Your sophomore record, that's the ultimate time to not [mess] with the formula. And [Kanye] gets me — a guy who has never made a hip-hop record in his life." — Jon Brion


while others assumed the worst.

" 'Oh, [Kanye's] gone off his rocker — he's going to make an art record with some crazy, left-field music guy,' " Brion said, imagining haters' comments. "That's not the case whatsoever. It's very much a Kanye West record."

Brion should know — he's the co-executive producer of nearly every track on Late Registration. Renowned for his distinctive production work (Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann) and film scores for auteurs like Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"), Paul Thomas Anderson ("Punch Drunk Love") and David O. Russell ("I Heart Huckabees"), Brion's not exactly known for his hip-hop chops.

In fact, his résumé is completely devoid of hip-hop.

So why was he given such a big role in Late Registration? According to Brion, Kanye is a Fiona Apple fan, and while watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," his ears perked up at Brion's evocative score (see "Unsung Composer Jon Brion Brings Heart To 'Huckabees' ").

Hooked up through a mutual friend, producer Rick Rubin, Kanye wasted no time ringing up Brion. The two clicked instantly, and by the end of their first afternoon in the studio, the basic tracks for "Gold Digger" were complete.

"It was completely apparent that he was open to investigating new ideas," Brion said. "I was playing something on a track and he was completely psyched, and then he left after a few hours and said, 'I'll see you tomorrow.' "

The album's recording was experimental and exploratory. West, who marveled at the many unusual instruments Brion has at his disposal, would bring in a song's basic structure, and then the pair would let their imaginations run wild. Kanye would then pick and choose, shaping the track as he saw fit. Make no mistake, Brion says: Kanye was in charge.

"When he hears something he likes, he knows it," Brion said. "He has vision, and when the guy makes quick, intuitive decisions, he just has it. I'd watch him take a rough track that I had worked on and completely stand it on its head in 10 minutes — and it's just better. It was mind-boggling."

All that praise makes it seem that Brion's as big a fan of West as the rapper is of himself. But the producer said Kanye's choice to enlist a hip-hop novice was not only courageous, it spoke to West's true nature — which isn't the one you usually read about.

"On your sophomore record, that's the ultimate time to not f--- with the formula, right?" he said. "And he gets me — a guy who has never made a hip-hop record in his life — and gives me half the reins? That is not an egomaniac."

Brion makes his mark on tracks like "Gone," which features rappers Cam'ron and Consequence and is slated to be the last track on the album. "It's just a drum beat, an Otis Redding sample and Kanye going to town over it. There's a whole string section, and it turns into crazy soundtrack music. It's a big piece of work."

Brion conducted a 20-piece orchestra on "Celebration," and had to restrain the players' laughter at the lyric "You know what this is?/ It's a celebration, bitches." He also had to fight with Kanye to keep the song, which had begun with weird electronic twinkling sounds before morphing into its current cinematic treatment, on the album — something he also had to do with a track about his sick grandmother called "Roses."

"His attitude was, 'See if you can make me like this,' " Brion recalled. Brion layered the track with keyboards — and hours later, Kanye eliminated all of his work, along with the beat, which the producer adored. West reconfigured the song so that the verses are based around a vocal that forms the rhythm, and then Brion's music comes crashing in on the chorus. "All the authority [and] groove is from his voice, and when the chorus comes in, it's just this extravaganza of stuff going on," Brion said, comparing the track's construction to Prince's famous last-minute removal of the bass from "When Doves Cry."

"Heard 'Em Say," featuring Maroon 5's Adam Levine, was done quickly, as the singer had only a couple of free hours. Levine had a vocal that the pair had already discovered meshed with West's music (see "'Can He Do It Again?' — Kanye West Says New LP Backs Up His Bragging"), and Brion "translated" the two pieces in a matter of hours. "Adam had something, Kanye loved it and the three of us went at it like banshees, and there it was," he said.

Other guests on the record include Jay-Z, Nas, Game, Jamie Foxx, Paul Wall, John Legend, Brandy — and an unlikely guest drummer on "Diamonds From Sierra Leone": filmmaker Michel Gondry, who just happened to visit the studio on a day Brion had set up a drum kit (see "Kanye Previews New LP, Modestly Exclaims: 'This Is Killing Everything Out There!' ").

Other songs on the album include "Addicted," "Touch the Sky" and "Drive Slow." Brion says each track the pair worked on could have gone in multiple directions, and he expects that drastically different remixes of the songs will be released. While Brion acknowledges that the album is not standard hip-hop, he stresses that West isn't, either.

"There are colors and ideas that make [the album] different from average hip-hop, but Kanye is already different from the average hip-hop guy. He's got this sense of pop record-making which is really solid, and he likes tracks with a lot of things going on in them — which is not necessarily common for hip-hop. He was already barking up that tree."
 
Jay-Z said:
Says Jay-Z: "We all grew up street guys who had to do whatever we had to do to get by. Then there's Kanye, who to my knowledge has never hustled a day in his life. I didn't see how it could work."
Click to expand...


:lol
 
Himuro said:
I've listened to LR like..8 times now. I know this may be alittle early but, this has got to be a modern mainstream hip hop classic. College Dropout, while a great album, is something I eventually got tired of because of the skits. This album, essentially, beats the shit out of Kanye's debut album, I can listen to this all the way through (skits and all, atleast the skits are HILARIOUS this time). I don't even know what is my favorite song, but this is one meaty cd. The amazing thing is, I've never been so attached to such a long album before, I usually get tired and skip tracks after maybe..track 13 or 15, but this is straight crack music. o_O

I'm disappointed there was no Mos Def, Common, or Kweli though. :( But the amount of guests compared to the first album is amazing. There's hardly any at all, while on Dropout, there's a guest like every song.

And don't even get me on the PRODUCTION. HOLY SHIT, this album has the best production on an hip hop lp I have ever heard. Jesus, I want to go listen again. I need the instrumentals to this album.
Click to expand...
Your Opinion = Mine. Seriously,it IS Crack music. It doesn't strike a chord with everybody though, because it's not exactly a....I dunno, a party album. It's nothing you can really see being played in the club, you know? This album is just so much more, I dunno how to put this exactly.... "Graceful" than anything else out there. There's just so much effort put into this album, and even if you don't like the music, you have to atleast appreciate that. I just can't get enough of this. If rap turns into music like this, I'll gladly welcome it with open arms.
 
Agent Icebeezy said:
http://www.detnews.com/2005/events/0508/19/E06-285250.htm

Thursday, August 18, 2005

West treats crowd to 'Late Registration'

Grammy winner looks outside of hip hop to create much anticipated sophomore album.

By Adam Graham The Detroit News
Image
Reed Saxon / Associated Press

"Iwanted to make an album where there was no fast-forward material on it," he said, adding -- in typical West fashion -- he's confident he's made the album of the year, an "uncriticizable" achievement deserving of the top honor at next year's Grammy Awards.

But if he were to lose, "I'd be happy to lose to System of a Down," he said of the Armenian-American metal maniacs, whose "Mesmerize" was released in May.

"That's my favorite album of the year so far," he says.
Click to expand...

Holy fucking shit. Hahaha, my mind is boggled. I can't believe he actually said that.

+2 bajillion respect points to Kanye. Wow.
 
yes, the album is a masterpiece, listened to it about 30 times

in the car all time
on my comp all the time
on my stereo when im going to bed/getting up

cant get enough kanye
 
fucking awesome album, cant say this enough

i get the same feeling, I just want to turn it louder and louder whenever i hear any song :lol

Himuro, check out Freshman Adjustment Vol 1 and 2 if u havent already, and the Late Registration Advance with 8 songs, great stuff there, if u havent listened to it yet
 
Himuro said:
It feels energetic. It has this energy that dropout didn't have. It feels like Kanye put his soul in to this shit to me. The ferociousness, the BEAT, on that track with Nas: We Major.

I have that song on repeat, seriously, I can't stop listening. I've never been addicted to music before l ike this.

WE MAJOR?! COME ON HOMIE, WE MAJOR, WE MAJOR?!

Fuck that club shit, this stuff is spritiual. When I listen to this album, I get so excited, I don't know why. Not even my favorite hip hop artist, Common's latest album (which I love to death) gave me this excitement when I listen to it. It's probably because hip hop is finally coming back, that CULTURAL hip hop, that doesn't make me embarassed to be linked to such a ridiculous form of artistry through stereotypes..and it's all thanks to Kanye. If the conscious artists were smart, they'd jump ship on GOOD music, and make it the best damn hip hop label this side of Rawkus, but for mainstream. Seriously, if they did that, we'd have a fucking revolution, and MIGHT be able to take the music back frmo the corporations.
Click to expand...
YES, that's what I meant to say. "Cultural", that fits it so well. If only everybody jumped in the Kanye boat. It reminds me of the end of "Gone" a bit (Except with a happy ending).

"Bring Me Down"'s lyrics are so god damn true. The whole song is just so chilling, but oh so true. This is a god damn masterpiece. I just can't get enough.

"Dog, if I was you, I wouldn't feel myself
Dog, if I was you, I'd kill myself."
 
Dipset Forever. This was also produced by Kanye, HOT ass track. Kanye doesn't drop any verses, or sing on the chorus though, but its fucking HOT.

I've always liked cam, ever since confessions of fire. Even though he drops some contradictions throughout his cds, his flow is too unique to deny. Even on that Gone track, he brought some heat.

BTW - you guys know that Cam actually got accepted to Duke and North Carolina to play ball, for free, but stayed in NY to hustle... Well, I dunno if this is a good thing :lol Ah well.
 
methodman said:
BTW - you guys know that Cam actually got accepted to Duke and North Carolina to play ball, for free, but stayed in NY to hustle... Well, I dunno if this is a good thing :lol Ah well.
Click to expand...

very cool, never knew that :lol
 
methodman said:
BTW - you guys know that Cam actually got accepted to Duke and North Carolina to play ball, for free, but stayed in NY to hustle... Well, I dunno if this is a good thing :lol Ah well.
Click to expand...

By "hustle" you mean had grad so poor, that none of those school could accept him right?
 
No no no... He made it into those schools, and got scholarships but he didn't go because he wanted to Hustle... which is exactly what i said lol.
 
I'm pretty sure he said it himself in an interview, that he was being recruited to a few schools but couldn't get in because of academic reasons. But that was a few years ago, back when he was cool with Mase, maybe he's story has changed since then.
 
Album is good, We Major is probably my least liked track. Not only is it boring as fuck, but it's just as intrusive.
 
cam and Mase were real nice... Cam went to ball at texas for a year or so and went back to NY... Mase went to another school... they used to play AAU for the gauchos who are a very popular team over here in the tri state..... Listen to Reasons on Purple Haze, you will hear about it...
 
Listened up to Roses in the car ride to the gym this morning and I'm completely blown away by the production and lyrics so far. I found Kanye's post College Dropout work was hit or miss for me, and so I had no great expectations for this, but still pleasantly surprised.

Perhaps a little off topic, but can anyone recommend any other rap albums I've missed this year? The last cd I bought was Royce's MIC mixtape (not even sure when that was), but I'd like to know whether there was any other shit worth listening to.
 
theREBELins said:
Listened up to Roses in the car ride to the gym this morning and I'm completely blown away by the production and lyrics so far. I found Kanye's post College Dropout work was hit or miss for me, and so I had no great expectations for this, but still pleasantly surprised.

Perhaps a little off topic, but can anyone recommend any other rap albums I've missed this year? The last cd I bought was Royce's MIC mixtape (not even sure when that was), but I'd like to know whether there was any other shit worth listening to.
Click to expand...
Common - Be
Edan - Beauty and the Beat
DangerDoom - The Mouse & and the Mask (Out in Oct.)

That's all I got from this year so far though. There's supposed to be a whole lot of good stuff coming at the end of this year, but they say that every year, so we'll have to see about that.
 
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