<p> </p><p>By Odeisel</p><p>On December 7, 2009, Entertainment Weekly awarded Kanye West’s debut album The College Dropout album of the decade. It would seem to be an acceptable choice, as it began the artist career of perhaps the most polarizing male artist in music presently. It began a shift in the tenor of Hip-Hop music, which is always a signifier of classicity. It sold a fairly large amount of records, which is note of its mass consumption. There was the powerful single “Jesus Walks” and stunning guest appearances throughout from some great emcees. All the ingredients are there to let that choice ride without challenge. But they got it wrong. The album of the decade was not the great College Dropout, but its follow up, the masterful Late Registration.</p><p>To his credit, Kanye was not satisfied with the breakaway success of Dropout. Many artists have stunning debuts only to crash back to Earth flop city style. Only those with legs are equipped to run the marathon of stardom. Rearrange Kanye and you have Kenyan and no one runs the marathon like them. Late represents a significant leap in both Kanye’s lyricism, which originally had a hit or miss tenor of cute/corney depending on your mood. He was credible as a rapper, but Late Registration was an album that had to be taken seriously lyrically, in both the more mature themes and the song construction. His lyrics now wove stories and boomeranged back to the beginning to summarize his arguments. Take his lyrics from the magnificent “We Major” which we will discuss later, in which Ye’ raps:</p><p>He delivers his point crisp without extra words and devoid of a simple punchline rhyme scheme while encompassing internal rhyme schemes. As an emcee he really wasn’t capable of that kind of construction on The College Dropout.</p>
