Kanye West. Who gives a shit about Kanye West? I don't, except for his music, of course--which is certainly the only thing about him that anyone probably should give a shit about. This album came off the massive success of
Late Registration, and was viewed as kind of a step down, but now I think it can be seen as a proto-
My Dark Twisted Fantasy--a lot of the stuff that was fully successful there can be seen here in embryo. There's a lot of crap on here, though--"Good Life" is a generic party-rap track more suited to T.I. than Kanye, "Big Brother" is unmemorable and the collaboration with Chris Martin sucks about as much as his collaboration with the Maroon 500 guy on
Late Registration ruled (a lot). But Kanye definitely tries to open things up here--there's Daft Punk samples, a Moby-ish choral backing on "Can't Tell Me Nothing" (great track) and the stunning "Drunk and Hot Girls", a song that seemingly everyone hates but me. I think it's fantastic, and the intentionally-ugly backing and West's lazy vocals
perfectly convey the song's subject. The reason I'm mentioning individual songs here is that there isn't much of a coherent sound--West is just messing around, trying different things, and while it's certainly not awful it does feel rote compared to what came before and what came after.
MY RATING:
6.7
Kanye West - "Champion"
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