Kanye West - Late Registration: Album Review

Kanye West, Late Registration (DL Brothers, 2005)
A year from now, after he's run afoul of the Jews and hence gone broke and taken up karate, people are going to look back and say, "You know what? Byron Crawford was right: Kanye West really does have very little actual talent." What a poor fucking album.

WAKE UP MR. WEST

Wake up, Big Mama's Boy, it's time for your brother Consequence to come swallow your chode like he probably does every morning. NULLUS!

HEARD 'EM SAY

I heard this homosexual go on TV yesterday and say his shit sounded like Portishead's Dummy. This sounds like something gay dudes listen to while they give each other whirly birds. Oh no, the guy from Maroon 5's on this, too! Are they seeing each other? NULLUS!

TOUCH THE SKY

Pretty sweet, actually, on some old school-sounding pimp shit. Lupe Fiasco aka the dude that wrote "Diamonds" guests on this. Ever notice his flow sounds a lot like a certain somebody's?

GOLD DIGGER

Big Mama's Boy has a thing against black dudes who can afford the best going and getting, you know, white girls. He can probably relate more so than the rest of us since he basically is, for all intents and purposes, a black woman. NULLUS!

SKIT #1

More of this "college is evil" bullshit.

DRIVE SLOW

Real poor shit. It'll be interesting to watch even the staunchest of Kanye defenders try to make a case for this garbage. Paul Wall almost if not actually sounds decent by comparison, the same way he does on that Mayke Jooones song.

MY WAY HOME

God, I can't stand Common when he flips this fucking Def Poetry Jam flow. Does anybody that used to like Resurrection still like this dude today? (Note that when I say "used to," I mean like 10 years ago. Not two years ago or some shit.)

CRACK MUSIC

Whoa Kanye is deep, blaming Grandpa Caligula for breaking up the Black Panthers! Clearly, he's read several paragraphs about the Panthers. Oh, that's right: His daddy may or may not have been in the Panthers, so he's got real activist stripes. The rest of us just went to college. Us fucking losers!

ROSES

So Mama's Lil' Homo's grandma died in a hospital. Boo motherfucking hoo. Maybe that was god's way of punishing him for making all these songs with these hideous gospel choruses.

BRING ME DOWN

I was wondering which one of these songs would be about me. Why did it have to be the one featuring Brandy though? Honestly, they should teach a class about Brandy at the Harvard Business School. Perhaps no female singer ever looked more like a space alien, and yet she keeps managing to pop up year after year.

ADDICTION

I kinda like this one, too. I mean, the lyrics are fucking teh ghey on some "All Falls Down" shit, but I can dig the beat and the sample.

SKIT #2

You notice the only grown motherfuckers who are so concerned with not being broke are assholes like this, who also had such unfortunate upbringings? It's not our fault his daddy dropped his momma (who's probably as effed up as he is) like a bad habit and forced them to spend 20+ years in the "Good Times"-esque Chicago ghetto. Just think, if the two of them had better attitudes, he might have a college degree.

DIAMONDS FROM SIERRA LEONE (REMIX)

The "Diamonds That Some Lying Ass TI Told Me Weren't From Sierra Leone" remix. You know, the one where Jay talks to Memphis Bleek as if he were a woman. Speaking of which: Is it really "in a black person's soul to rock that gold," or a black woman's soul? I don't own anything that could be construed as jewelry. Not even a watch.

WE MAJOR

One of the most hideous things I've ever heard before in my life. I'm actually convinced that this is an ingenious practical joke on Mama's Big Homo's part just to see which white kids on the Internets are going to insist this is actually a good song. Sean Fennessey, this your cue. You're right, btw: exo only called on dudes like you and not people he actually knows and has worked with for years to carry out his little blog spam attack because you guys are friends. You should build a clubhouse and have a secret handshake and shit.

SKIT #3

I missed this one and didn't feel like going back.

HEY MAMA

If 2Pac could hear this, he'd roll over in his Folgers can. Real sappy gay-sounding shit. (Yes, literally the antonym of hip-hop.) Remember, his mom is probably the reason he's such a douche in the first place. I recommended killing her years ago, which would have saved us from this abortion.

CELEBRATION

I was all expecting this to be a remake of Kool & The Gang's awesome "Celebration." Oh, how disappointed I was. At this point in this nightmare of an album, he's actually taken to banging on his keyboards with his elbows while Consequence bufus him from behind. Or at least that's how this sounds. NULLUS!

SKIT #4

If I was a recording artist, I would make a series of four albums about the fact (and that's the key word here) that people who actually graduate from college stand to make something ridonkulous like $8 gozillion more than people who don't over the course of a lifetime. Then I would go on TV everday just to rub it into the faces of the kind of people that buy into this silly anti-intellectual bullshit.

GONE

Yeah, this is kinda cool. Of course it would've been 900% cooler had there just been Cam'ron on it, and maybe Juelz Santana instead of this fucking 40-year-old perpetual doobie roller Consequence. Big Mama's Boy pops up after this shit's already been cranking for like 4 minutes with a real beast of a poorly written and spit verse.

DIAMONDS FROM SIERRA LEONE ("BONUS")

The same shitty version that's been playing all summer, which doesn't have john shit to do with conflict diamonds even though I'm convinced that the first verse is actually about me.

LATE ("BONUS")

Maybe the worst thing he's ever done. I bet he tried to insist this went on the album and one of the TIs was like, "If we put this rancid-sounding bullshit on the album, our stock will go down six points!" So they compromised and buried it way the fuck at the end as a so-called "bonus" track. Also: Did Mr. Antonym of Hip-Hop just call someone a dyke?

COMMENTS: I think I'll just repeat my little intro: A year from now, after he's run afoul of the Jews and hence gone broke and taken up karate, people are going to look back and say, "You know what? Byron Crawford was right: Kanye West really does have very little actual talent." What a poor fucking album.

BEST TRACKS: "Diamonds" and "Diamonds (Remix)"