Back with the Kanye album reviews. This time reviewing Kanye's first album The College Dropout (2004). This album was Kanye's first (of 4) wins of the Grammy for Best Rap Album. Not only that but it beat competition that year from Jay Z, so I had high expectations going in.
3 Minute Read
This album was Kanye's introduction to the world. At the time Hip Hop was very much dominated by either a more lyrical style or gangster rap style, and Kanye came up with something that sounded completely fresh.
The College Dropout has a wide array of beats, some more simplistic maybe with a catchy sample, and others more experimental and layered. Some of my favourite beats were 'Family Business' and 'Breathe in Breathe out".
Kanye comes across on this album hungry. Although I feel as though he is still trying to hone is rapping skills, you can still feel him trying to push his pen hard with a few bars here and there. Like, his rapping isn't as good as it is on say Graduation, but he makes up for it I think in some of his melodies that he tries and because the beats are hard it's not too much of a disaster if some of the lyrics are weaker. Some of the features did help with some of the lyrical sides of it, for example Jay Z on "Never Let Me Down" and Common on "Get Em High".
His storytelling is probably one of his best skills lyrically in my opinion."Family Business" is the best example of this. He's vivid, creative and doesn't sacrifice other parts of his ability to tell the story, for example he won't dumb down the rhymes and will still be spitting multi-syllable bars. I dunno, to me it just seams when he's telling a story he's always so comfortably in the pocket of the beat.
I definitely think it's worth mentioning Twista's feature on "Slow Jamz". His flow was ridiculously smooth, rode the beat effortlessly and when he matched his flow to the melody of the sample that was just phenomenal.
The only other negative I have about this album is the number of skits. It kind of extended the running time way more than it needed to be, and just made it less listenable I guess.
And I know I said Kanye doesn't sacrifice his rapping ability to tell a story, but the track "Last Call", when he's literally speaking the story of how he got signed and his come up, it would have been nice for him to just rap it, because it's a really interesting story so would've sounded good if he could put it together with some lyrics.
Overall, the more I hear from Kanye the more I'm becoming a big fan of his. Similar to some of his other stuff I've heard, this album is creative, witty and endearing. "The College Dropout" is personal, it is interesting to learn more about Kanye and see where he started and came from, considering I've heard later albums already, such as "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy".
Solid first album
7/10
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