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COPYRIGHT 2005 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
There are few pop stars as consistently discontent and as obstreperously proud as the rapper and producer Kanye West. You might think that after selling nearly three million copies of his 2004 debut album, "The College Dropout," winning three awards at the Grammys (where he cavorted onstage in angel wings), hearing Jay-Z, hip-hop's paterfamilias, call him a "genius" in a rap song, and launching a line of diamond-encrusted Jesus head pendants, West would be feeling reasonably swell. But listening to his thrilling and frustrating new record, "Late Registration," is a bit like being chauffeured around in the fanciest car you can imagine by a driver who won't stop complaining about the mileage or the radio reception. You're annoyed, but at the same time you don't want the ride to end.
West, who is twenty-eight years old, made his name as a producer on Jay-Z's 2001 album, "The Blueprint." His style was gimmicky but distinctive. He would sample a song by a well-known seventies band--the Jackson Five, say, or the Doors--speed up the track until the singers squeaked, and reinforce the beat with a syncopated matrix of sampled drums. At a moment when hip-hop artists, driven largely by the increasing cost of licensing samples, were creating most of their songs from scratch with digital keyboards and drum machines, West's taste for old records was...
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