Manufacturer: Universal / Island
What do you do after you've reinvented a genre? Well, going on Graduation, the third full-length artist album by hip-hop's most famous Noughties auteur Kanye West, you hunt across the pop landscape for fresh sounds ripe for plunder. Most obviously, there's Daft Punk, whose track "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" forms the vocoder foundation to "Stronger". But Kanye's learnt more from the ...
Manufacturer: Mercury
Manufacturer: Polydor Group
For haters eager to see Kanye hit a sophomore slump--no such luck. Late Registration can't replicate the novelty of last year's College Dropout, but otherwise, this is an impressively more mature and labored-over album. Lyrically, Kanye's only improved a notch but musically, the album sounds incredible, especially with co-producer Jon Brion helping polish the songs to perfection. ...
Manufacturer: Roc-A-Fella
Manufacturer: Universal
College Drop Out, the debut from the most sought-after hip-hop producer not named Pharrell, delivers the unthinkable: West magically sledgehammers home his opinions on taboo topics over beats that are equally daring. The envelope-ripping beats shouldn't come as a surprise given that he's supplied the soundscapes to monster singles by everyone from Alicia Keys ("You Don't Know My Name") to ...
Manufacturer: Mercury Records Ltd (London)
It Takes a Nation of Millions was the sign that hip-hop had exploded like a grenade. A rap record as abrasive, hard-core and eloquent as a Winston Churchill speech, the 1988 disc is one classic track after another: tense, multilayered, harmonically wild music. Chuck D declaims like a master preacher with foil Flavor Flav's voice darting around his. They have got the desperate energy of ...
Best-known--and reviled, by many hardcore headz--as the man who set a rap to a tune from Annie, that notorious tale of life in the 'hood ("Hard Knock Life"), Jay-Z clearly decided some time ago that amassing the Benjamins came before keeping it real, in the greater scheme of things. Still, even his harshest critics might be somewhat placated by the re-issue of this, his first album, which ...
Manufacturer: Northwestside
