Late Registration

A strong follow-up to West’s debut studio album, Late Registration touches on my of the same emotional touchstones as his first, often hitting some of the same highs, but I don’t feel the same connection with it as a singular work as I do to The College Dropout. I would say that, as compared to that one, this album in general feels much happier; like a true celebration following his successful first release. There are many songs on this album that arise the same kind of giddiness out of me as The New Workout Plan did (Gold Digger, of course, being at the top of that list), but there aren’t really any like All Falls Down. Diamonds From Sierra Leone and Bring Me Down get close to that for me. None of this is to say that this album too isn’t fantastic though; it hits some very high highs in its own right.

Heard ’Em Say, Touch The Sky, We Major, Celebration have all given me great joy. I have cried to Hey Mama and Roses. If this was Kanye West’s first release, and not his second, it would be a 10; in terms of production it is probably the better work. I think one of the most important things about this album, if you are in the business of psychoanalyzing famous people, is to see the subtle changes in a work from West between chasing success and after having achieved it. There is a slightly different vibe to the kind of hungry “artist ego” exhibited in the overall package of The College Dropout when compared to this album. I think that that shift, while small here, would underscore some of the really bad stuff we would come to see later.

TL;DR: Fantastic.