"How we stop the Black Panthers, Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer, you hear that, what Gil Scott was hearing, when our heroes or heroines got hooked on heroin, crack raised the murder rate in D.C. and Maryland, we invested in that, it's like we got Merrill lynched"Late Registration is Kanye West's followup to College Dropout. While College Dropout took aim at the issues a lot of black students face at universities, Late Registration looks beyond the ivory towers and into the black community from a variety of angles. He weaves together these issues with stories from his own life and the album takes a noticeably darker tone. It's doesn't sound hopeless, but desperate.
Production of the album is as good as any Kanye West production. Kanye is a top five producer, no matter who you ask, it can't be denied. The only other person to produce a track without West was Just Blaze, who is just as legendary. Late Registration separates itself from College Dropout by dropping the uptempo songs. Instead he goes for a darker sounding album with majority of the tracks backed by live instruments and the track "Celebration," actually featuring a full twenty piece orchestra.
Lyrically West also steps up his game. While College Dropout had lyrics where you wondered who told West it would be okay, Late Registration doesn't feature that. It still has tracks that feature Kanye's sense of humor, but the cringe worthy bars are gone. The album also features fewer guest, meaning someone finally trusted him enough to carry an album lyrically by himself.
The first track "Heard 'Em Say," assures us that nothing is promised but also shows issues that a lot of black people face. "Before you ask me to go get a job today, can I at least get a raise of the minimum wage," reminds us that no matter what they say the minimum wage is simply too low to survive on. In my state minimum wage is $7.25, that comes to $290 for a 40 hour week and $15,080 for the year if you never take a day off. Even if you do get a job, you're still more than $10,000 below the poverty line, but you can't get welfare to make up the difference because you've got a job. In a lot of cases, it's just easier to collect unemployment. It's crazy that we live in a world where people get paid more to stay home than work. Then we become dependent on the government. Another line to look at is "His job try to claim that he too niggerish now, is it cause his skin blacker than licorice now?" Studies show that the darker a person's skin is the less intelligent they're thought to be. In addition to that starting at age 7 Caucasians believe black children are up to ten years older than their actual ages. In the story most like nothing has changed for his cousin other than his skin tone, but he's still to niggerish.
"Gold Digger," can be seen as a comical song or misogynistic, and it is, but let's look a little deeper. Outside the stories of women showing up to dates with all their kids and their kids friends, there's the "She got one of your kids, got you for 18 years, I know somebody paying child support for one of his kids, his baby momma's car and crib is bigger than his," lines. Like it or not, there are women who use children to trap men in relationships or in this case, trap rich men for financial security. That's a sad fact but it's not the line I want to look at. "stick by his side, I know there's dudes balling and yeah that's nice, and they gonna keep calling and trying but you stay right girl, and when you get on he leave your ass for a white girl." That's it, that's the line. I'm a firm believer of loving who you love. However I find it ridiculous when I see black men like Brian White in the media talking about how he refuses to date black women, like black women aren't the ones supporting his work. It's not just actors either. It's rappers like Lil Wayne saying he'll never have another dark skinned woman give birth to a child of his and the number of athletes is just ridiculous. It's crazy how many black men are supported by black women only to go on and not only leave them, but disrespect them in highly public ways.
The track "My Way Home," features a classic sample from Gil Scott Heron and a verse from Common, before he was suggesting that hugs end racism, and none from Kanye himself. Common's verse takes aim at the idea of hustling in the hood and points out how it leaves us running in circles. For example, "We wear struggling chains, divided only hustle remains, making sense of it we hustle for change." Despite the fact that we as black people are often poor and struggle we go buy chains as proof that we finally made it. Thus, struggle chains. However, the flaunting of wealth divides us and leaves nothing but the hustle. The division is at home, in our neighborhoods where the hatred is a reference to the Gil Scott sample and Common's opening line. He goes on to state we're making sense of it which can also be heard as cents. We all know people who are constantly hustling but broke. As Kanye stated earlier minimum wage leaves you broke, hustling often leaves you just as broke. Common goes on to point out how most of his initial money made from music went to bailing out friends. Hustling turns relationships into jail, leaving people trapped and children neglected. Eventually he debates just leaving and never coming back, another play on the Gil Scott sample where he states "might not be such a bad idea if I never went home again."
"Crack Music," is a track that makes the bold statement that rap music is the black community paying back the white community for the crack epidemic. Kanye starts by pointing out Ronald Reagan distributing cocaine to the inner city to fund his Contra War. A fact that can't be disputed. He talks about how it eventually took down a lot of black leaders, most notably the entire Black Panther Party. They fell apart because those who didn't die from drug use began selling drugs, became addicted or just couldn't continue while watching their friends on drugs. Kanye paints vivid pictures of crack flowing through black neighborhoods culminating with "This the type of music that you make when you 'round that." He also goes on to compare the creation of music to the turning cocaine into crack, "Sometimes I feel the music is the only medicine, so we, cook it, cut it, measure it, bag it, sell it, the fiends cop it, nowadays they can't tell if, that's that good shit, we ain't sure man, put the CD on your tongue, yeah that's pure man." Who are the fiends? Suburban white kids, they buy more hip hop than anyone else. It's the reason people like Tipper Gore wanted to ban rap music. They fear the results that rap music will have on their children the same way we fear drugs in our communities. The track finishes with a poem from Malik Yusef in which he states:
"We took that shit, measured it and then cooked that shit, and what we gave back was crack music, and now we ooze it through they nooks and crannies, so our mommas ain't got to be they cooks and nannies, and we gon' repo everything they ever took from granny, now the former slaves trade hooks for Grammys, his dark diction has become America's addiction, those who ain't even black use it, we gon' keep baggin up this here crack music"He just continues the idea of taking back what was lost to crack by using music. Rap music is a good way to make money. Why should our parents be forced to keep working hard when we can put them in a nice car or house. Rap music has been around for a while but it really exploded with our generation, becoming the most popular genre of music, so why shouldn't we use that to take back everything our grandparents lost?
The song "Roses," is a song about Kanye's grandmother having a near death experience. The track just shows the importance of family in these situations as well as the toll it can take on the people we consider the strongest, like Kanye's grandfather. There's only one part that truly stands out "If Magic Johnson got a cure for AIDS, and all the broke motherfuckers passed away, you telling me if my grandma's in the NBA, right now she'd be okay, but since she, was just a secretary, working for the church for 35 years, things supposed to stop right here?" It's not about being black or white at this part, just being poor. Being poor is probably a good reason to end racism because no matter who you are, money buys you better treatment. Magic Johnson is walking around just fine because he has money, but how many others die every day from AIDs?
The remix track "Diamonds From Sierra Leone," actually appears before the original. The remix is notable because in the midst of Roc-A-Fella breaking apart and everyone choosing Dame Dash over Jay Z, Jay finally responds. Despite the diss tracks slowing down because of the Roc coming apart, Jay was still deep in his feud with Nas. Jay didn't even bother to address Nas on this track, he just dropped an incredible verse about the Roc living forever. Kanye also states his allegiance to Jay and Roc-A-Fella but he still talks about his conflict of wanted diamonds chains and knowing about conflict diamonds. One instance that stands out is "Though it's thousands of miles away Sierra Leone connects to what we go through today, over here it's a drug trade, we die from drugs, over there they die from what we buy from drugs, the diamonds, the chains, the bracelets, the charms, I thought my Jesus-piece was so harmless, until I seen a picture of a shorty armless." Kanye still wants to wear the big chains but now he doesn't know if his conscience will let him. The track is also special because of the one that follows.
"We Major," is a track that was recorded in secret. Despite the fact the Jay Z was still in his beef with Nas, Kanye managed to get Nas to throw a verse down for the album. In the his verse Nas flat out made references to disses Jay had made previously. On the track "Blueprint 2," Jay famously asked Nas "Is it "Oochie Wally Wally" or is it "One Mic" is it "Black Girl Lost" or do shorty owe you for ice?" Pointing out how Nas switches between a conscious and commercial rapper. Nas addresses this by famously opening of his verse with "I heard the beat and I ain't know what to write, first line should it be about the hoes or the ice, fo-fo's or Black Christ, both flows'd be nice, rap about big paper or the black man plight." It's also possible Nas considered the beef done long before Jay, stating "I survived the livest niggas around," because he has. Nas has the distinction of being the only man to be dissed by Jay Z, Tupac and Biggie Smalls, yet his career survived.
Then he goes on to prove that he can do both throughout the track. While rapping about his riches he mentions "Now I'm a free agent and I'm thinking it's time to build my very own Motown, cause rappers be deprived, of executive 9 to 5's, and it hurts to see these companies be stealing the life." Nas finds it discouraging how all these black artist make millions for these companies and can't even get a job as an executive. To his credit he may have struck a nerve, afterwards Jay Z was eventually named president of Def Jam and signed Nas to a nice deal with a signing bonus. Jay was followed by Jeezy becoming Vice President at Atlantic and Scarface the president of Def Jam South. Then Nas went on to create Mass Appeal Records. I'm willing to give credit to Kanye West for getting two of the best verses in 2005 from Nas and Jay Z, and probably causing them to officially end the feud.
The "Broke Phi Broke," skits come to an end at this point and drive home their importance. It's not a fraternity come together for academics. It's brought together for black people to share their experiences of being broke. Sadly Kanye got kicked out because he was making too much money and smelling all nice. It's funny but it's a sad fact that sometimes people will say you turned your back on the hood if you reach success. It doesn't even have to be the level Kanye reached. It's sad, but Kanye paints it in a funny way and as shown much later with Watch The Throne, Kanye still has love for the hood anyway.
Late Registration is a special album. It deals with not only the issues facing the poor black community, but the rich black community as well. As much as he talks about the drug epidemic he talks about the addiction to fame. He wants to wear the biggest of chains but he still feels for people who can't. More than any other album it's a good look into the mind of Kanye West. It tells a story of a man who wants to wipe away the effects of racism but he can't because he's addicted to wealth. It shows Kanye locked in an internal struggle that he's still stuck in today. The thing is, it isn't just Kanye locked in this struggle but every black person who achieves some level of success.
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You can hear Darrell on the CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. He also plays classic arcade games on The Cabinet
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