Late Registration Review

Hiring a producer known for baroque pop records is the move that separated West from every other soul chopper of the era. The samples are still there, but now they sit inside arrangements: strings that lurch, a harpsichord, brass that answers the vocal instead of decorating it. Gone is a six minute suite that keeps changing shape and never loses its footing, which almost nothing in rap was attempting then.

Diamonds from Sierra Leone takes a lounge standard and turns it into a guilt spiral about a supply chain he was profiting from, and he refuses to resolve it, which is more honest than resolving it would have been. Crack Music and Roses do plain reporting on family and neighbourhood loss with none of the winking. It is longer than it needs to be, the skits are worse than the first album's, and Celebration is filler. None of that dents the fact that this is the most beautifully constructed thing he has ever put his name to.