West does floss hard on Late Registration - he even has record called "Celebration" - but strikes a balance on the LP.
Crack was placed in the black community, used to separate the groups who were to protect us from police brutality and racism at the time." It goes back to artists being on the chitterling circuit and labels giving them drugs to lull them over and not be focused on their business. " 'How we stop the Black Panthers?/ Ronald Reagan cooked up the answer.' You say, 'Ronald wasn't even the president at the time,' but he was the governor of when the CIA conspired to bring down the Black Panther Party. "I started, if I was to make a song about, I wanted to start where my parents told me it started," West said, explaining the record's origins. "What was Gil Scott hearin'?/ Why our heroes and heroines got hooked on heroin?"
This song, 'Crack Music,' has a few layers because it says that this is the music that's made from the crack generation." "It's certain people that get certain accolades, and they forget.
"Whatever happened to making that black music n-a?" Kanye asked the crowd. You feel like you have to move your head when West and the track's guest star the Game start yelling, "That's that crack music n-a!/ That real black music n-a!" Whether you agree with the lyrics Ye drops on "Crack Music" or not, he's making it clear that he has something on his mind other than sleeping with a groupie, blasting another MC to smithereens or riding in a car with suicide doors. When he accuses the government of flooding the black community with drugs and calls AIDS a man-made disease, West isn't saying anything we haven't heard before, but he's in a small group of current rappers who will touch political subject matter. What other MC would talk about blood diamonds the way West does on the "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" remix (see " 'Diamonds' Remix: Kanye Raps About Rocks, Jay Raps About Roc")? And you can't accuse Kanye of coming with the same old thing on Late Registration, either. West certainly did it the first time with The College Dropout, creating a classic LP out of a collection of songs as diverse as the colors of Polo shirts in his Louis Vuitton suitcase. I want to give y'all something that y'all will remember." "I'm not putting nothing out unless I can talk my sh. "There's nothing that they would love more than me to come subpar so they could find something wrong," Kanye, dressed in a blazer and jeans, said of the media. I said on a lot of records that Kanye is a genius, and I wasn't just freestyling. "We're here for a special event," Jay-Z said before introducing his friend. Producer/rapper recalls VMA magic, reveals what made him a fighter and admits that someone else is calling the shots, only on Overdrive. West played his album for over 300 people, told the story behind each track and even held a question-and-answer session afterwards. This time he did so on a larger scale, with people like Jay-Z, Talib Kweli and L.A. If you remember the historic listening session of 2004 - not historic in the groundbreaking sense, like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince winning rap its first Grammy, but more in a memorable sense, as those in attendance will never forget Kanye's speech or his performance of "Get Em High" with Common - you know that he takes pride in sharing his art with listeners (see "Common, John Mayer Drop In To Preview Kanye West's Dropout"). "I talk so much sh-, of course, 'Oh man, can he do it again?" Kanye said, standing on a small stage at Sony studios for his Late Registration listening session. Since his rapping came to the forefront, he's emerged as one of genre's most successful artists - and admits that he may have occasionally tooted his own horn louder than some people would have liked (see "Kanye Previews New LP, Modestly Exclaims: 'This Is Killing Everything Out There!' "). West himself hasn't done too shabbily with his present professions, excelling as a producer, label CEO and hip-hop performer. He explained that the title of his fourth full-length (no release date for that one yet) is named after what everyone seeks after they graduate: A Good Ass Job. NEW YORK - Kanye West's second album hasn't even come out yet, but he's already got a release date ready for his third LP and a title set for the fourth.ĭuring Wednesday night's listening session for Late Registration, Kanye revealed that album number three, entitled Graduation, will come out in October 2006.