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Kanye West “Late Registration” Roc-a-Fella

Success is difficult to measure, but there’s a compelling argument for rapper and producer Kanye West as the most successful musician of last year. His debut, “The College Dropout,” was that rare record that won over fans (3 million copies sold), peers (a leading 10 Grammy nominations) and critics (the top spot in The Village Voice’s national critics poll) in equally dominant fashion. If pop music were professional wrestling, West would be walking around right now wearing a belt as big as a tire. So how does one follow this kind of success? Play everything safe, goes conventional wisdom. Industry rules suggest you don’t mess with formula – in this case, the mix of now-ubiquitous sped-up soul samples and hand-clap snares that caught ears and rattled car windows a year ago. Don’t do anything crazy like hire composer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion – best known for film scores and work with Fiona Apple (and who’s never touched a rap song in his life) – as co-producer. There are certainly more palatable ways of drawing attention than confronting a radio station on air for censoring the words “white girl” from your single, or standing up for gays in a musical genre as homophobic as the NFL. In the name of mass appeal, don’t record a chorus that sneers “That’s that crack music, nigga / That real black music, nigga.” And where did the chipmunk voices go? With his sophomore follow-up, “Late Registration,” West is doing everything the wrong way, and the results are a success by almost any measure. Though not as immediately grabbing as its single-laden predecessor, this newest effort finds West scrapping his still-popular but painfully worn-out sound (only in hip-hop can a sound be beaten to death within a year) for some new tricks and some well-earned staying power. Like him or not – and many hip-hop heads have tired of the media onslaught – West shows why he’s not going anywhere soon. Not that everything’s changed – Kanye’s imprint is still unmistakable. His pop and R&B sensibilities are such that the music constantly walks the tightrope between great pop and pure cheese – thankfully, he only falls off the edge once, on the irredeemable Brandy collaboration “Bring Me Down.” The skits are also unfortunately back, and as bad as ever. The rest of the tracks, at least, feature interesting production touches. But the album truly takes off when Kanye pushes himself out of his comfort zone. The gangsta-leaning “Drive Slow” flips the same Hank Crawford sample as 2Pac’s “Shorty Wanna Be a Thug.” Brion is refreshingly allowed to cut loose with his idiosyncratic flourishes on the health-care diatribe “Roses,” the Nas collaboration “We Major” and the album’s high point, the Otis Redding sampling, string-heavy “Gone.” The Kanye West juggernaut is already in full swing – the cover of Time, perfect scores from fawning mainstream critics, massive radio airplay – and while we’ll be sick of half of these songs by Thanksgiving, the largely inspired “Late Registration” illustrates that, in this case, success comes with good reason. – Alfred Lee