After the college dropout, he began to devote himself to the production of hip-hop music, starting with local artists and specializing in accelerating vocal samples from rnb and soul songs. In the late nineties, he's credited with early mainstream rap records and in the next few years he starts churning out hits for some of the music industry's greatest performers: he gets praise for his work behind the keyboards on "The Blueprint" (2001), one of Jay-Z's best albums, often reputed to be one of the greatest of the decade. All these successes are made with rhythms that this guy considers waste, because he has been keeping the best ones for himself for years. He then decides to go to the forefront and take his piece of the pie from the industry.
Kanye West has always wanted to be a rapper rather than a producer, and despite his great success in creating beats, he struggled to find a contract. His themes are opposed to the kind of gangsta character the industry demands, plus executives are used to producers improvising rappers, with perpetually disappointing results: no one thinks that Kanye West could be the exception to this rule. He comes close to signing with the Capitol, but doesn't receive the approval of all the executives and the agreement fades. In the summer of 2002, Damon Dash signs him as a rapper at Roc-A-Fella Records, without having the intention of promoting too much his future work as a lyricist, which also goes against the tide of his label mates, whose major exponents are part of the State Property, a street rap / gangster rap group.
West began work on the album in the late nineties and completed it in four years: in the autumn of 2002, he falls asleep while driving, causing an accident that causes the other driver's legs to break and miraculously leaves him alive, with a shattered jaw. His jaw is surgically reconstructed and the boy is back to making music in a short time. He wraps up the album, which undergoes several leaks long before its original release date: Kanye takes the opportunity to review, remix, enrich, improve and fix his debut, removing some imperfect choices. Due to the constant pursuit of perfection, the release is postponed three times, to finally be released in February 2004.
The album is a commercial success that goes far beyond Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam's expectations: it's first among the rap records, second on the Billboard 200, and has market in Europe, being certified double platinum in a few months. Five singles are extracted, all are classified and obtained various certifications, in particular "Slow Jamz", also included in the record of fellow citizen Twista released a few weeks earlier, comes in first place in the Hot 100. Kanye West was born in Atlanta and raised in Chicago, in a bourgeois and Catholic environment by a divorced mother, a college professor, themes that are reflected in his music. He gets a huge critical success and begins to create a large following among fans, thanks to the pop sounds of his music, of its calm amateur flow and of lyrics that are much more understandable and much easier for the average listener to assimilate, digest and relate to, unlike the avalanche of gangsta outings flooding the market.
His arguments are more related to family, religion, work, personal problems, materialism, consumerism, sex and racism. His lyricism is elementary, his vocabulary is limited, and they're performed with an average flow, calm, normal, at times awkward, and accompanied by a chant that sounds unforced, but not good. His lyrical deficits, ignorance and his own technical gaps, are filled by some funny lines and a practically flawless production, in addition to the massive use of guests to fill in what Roc-A-Fella feared to be a mess from a rapping standpoint.
Originally, in Dame Dash's mind, Cam'ron is expected to complete most of the album, while Dipset's MC makes no appearance and in its place are Syleena Johnson, Jay-Z, Common, Talib Kweli, Twista, Ludacris, Mos Def, Freeway, The Harlem Boys, Jamie Foxx, Consequence, J. Ivy and GLC. Hova goes off-topic on "Never Let Me Down", while the other singers and rappers do a good job, making several interesting songs: there are some of the best performers on the scene and none disappoint, it's interesting "Two Words" which boasts Mos Def and a Freeway more contained than usual, on a dirty underground soundscape with guitar licks and a perfect chipmunk soul sample in the background.
There's an obvious excess of material and selected tracks: Kanye West only gets a third of the album as soloist and another third is composed of skits and interludes, for a total of 21 tracks and over 76 minutes of listening. On this album, West sounds little more than a generic rapper with a good voice and a great ear for beats — which isn't to be taken for granted, especially in hip-hop — and who can boast a stellar production: he's a better producer than a rapper, he has a skill behind keyboards that few have had in his time and that immediately places him as one of the best rhythm makers on the circuit. His simple pop music sounds captivating and beautiful, thanks to the return to the use of the sample and the definitive consecration of the sound defined as "chipmunk soul", the soul and rnb samples accelerated dramatically.
Kanye West's debut at the age of 26 is considered one of the best in rap, pop rap, and is considered his best album by some fans. Emerging from a declining Roc-A-Fella, with its creator on the path of retreat, this project is an important statement and it proves that there's someone who can adequately carry on the legacy of the label, which the State Property members wouldn't have been able to do. Ultimately, it's a good album, overly long, erratic, honest and fun, where almost every track sound essential, made by a boy of pure talent and genius, one of the best works of the decade in hip-hop. 8.5/10.
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