Kanye West - The College Dropout

Why are so many rap albums so long? I mean, Kanye got his big break as a producer when he did a few songs on The Blueprint. How did he look at that album, which has thirteen tracks consisting of fifteen three to five minute songs, and decide that the formula could be improved with several tracks of generally weak comedy and undeveloped half-songs and a coda where he rambles about his early career for eight minutes? He mostly makes up for it with the music, but the filler drags it down from a potentially great album to merely a very good one. What Kanye lacks in pure technical prowess he makes up for with some amazing production, genuinely catchy hooks, the occasional stroke-of-genius line, and an ability to get a lot of good talent working together on a song. Not every guest appearance works out, but enough do to make it a pretty fun and diverse ride throughout.

There are a few clunkers here and there, but most of the songs have at least a few good things going for them, and the album as a whole is just plain entertaining, not quite as much on the pure musical level of more dedicated emcees, but as an auditory experience. Even a track like "The New Workout Plan" which has almost nothing going for it on paper manages to be mostly listenable thanks to the bells and whistles. A bit gimmicky maybe, but there are a lot of different ways to enjoy music. The other singles are all consistently fun, with "Jesus Walks" being one of the few songs by any artist to consistently give me chills and "Through the Wire" being at the least an interesting experiment, and a successful one at that. Most of the songs that aren't singles could pass for such, and while it's my standard practice to enjoy music by listening to whole albums through, The College Dropout is definitely one of the most iPodable I've heard. The anti-education stance a lot of the lyrics take is frankly bewildering, but for the most part I'm sold on an artist I've been quietly admiring from afar for a few years now.