West's style is far less future-vision, as he typically reworks old records with the playfulness of a kid enthralled by playing 33s at 45. West began maki, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. [27] It was regarded by Pitchfork critic Rob Mitchum as a "flawed, overlong, hypocritical, egotistical, and altogether terrific album". Diverging from the then-dominant gangster persona in hip hop, West's lyrics concern themes of family, self-consciousness, materialism, religion, racism, and higher education. Ad Choices, Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best-reviewed albums of the week. For the article on dropping out of college, see, Recording Industry Association of America, (Don't Worry) If There's a Hell Below, We're All Going to Go, "500 Greatest Albums of All Time: #464 (The Blueprint)", "Road to the Grammys: The Making Of Kanye West's College Dropout", "Kanye West: The Man, the Music, and the Message.(Biography)". Ye (born Kanye Omari West on June 8, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia), professionally known as Kanye West, is a Grammy award-winning American rapper, producer, singer, author, director, performance artist and fashion designer. "We Don't Care" contains samples of "I Just Wanna Stop", written by Ross Vannelli and performed by The Jimmy Castor Bunch. Ideal weather conditions of Chicago's rap void, producer name-dropping, and mainstream/underground bleedover may have handled the advance work for Kanye West's arrival, but College Dropout doesn't muff the kick. It was a large-scale commercial success, becoming West's best-selling album in the United States, with domestic sales of over 3.4million copies by 2014 and was certified four-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 2020. [86] Rhapsody named it the seventh best album of the decade and the fourth best hip hop album of the decade. Discuss humble beginnings making beats in bedroom, car accident in October 2002 that nearly killed him. [87][88], In 2005, Pitchfork named it No. [53][54] In 2004, The College Dropout ranked as the twelfth most popular of the year on the Billboard 200. In the same discussion, music journalist Eric Sundermann cited The College Dropout as the first in West's pop rap album trilogy that would be followed by Late Registration in 2005 and Graduation in 2007, while Craig Jenkins called it "a watershed moment in 2000s rap history where the nerds stormed the school to seize control from the jocks, a shift memorialized two albums later when Graduation trounced 50 Cent's Curtis album in their 2007 sales showdown."[131]. Start the wiki. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. [11] The composition, "Through the Wire", expressed West's experience after the accident, and helped lay the foundation for his debut album, as according to West "all the better artists have expressed what they were going through". Go directly to shout page. Rolling Stone's Jon Caramanica felt that "West isn't quite MC enough to hold down the entire disc", though claimed that West's "ace in the hole is his signature cozy sound",[72] while Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani observed "too many guest artists, too many interludes, and just too many songs period" on what he considered a "chest-beatingly self-congratulatory" yet humorous, deeply sincere, and affecting record. [5] The song also appeared on Twista's album Kamikaze. [23], West finished recording around December 2003, according to his older cousin and singer Tony Williams, who was recruited by the rapper two weeks before the album's deadline to contribute vocals. Rapper Kanye West on the cover of Time: Will rap music shed its "gangster" disguise? Backstory. The production of The College Dropout was primarily handled by West and showcased his "chipmunk soul" musical style, which made use of sped-up, pitch shifted vocal samples from soul and R&B records, in addition to West's own drum programming, string accompaniments, and gospel choirs; the album also features contributions from Jay-Z, Mos Def, Jamie Foxx, Syleena Johnson, and Ludacris, among others. [35] Garry Mulholland of The Observer described it as a "towering inferno of martial beats, fathoms-deep chain gang backing chants, a defiant children's choir, gospel wails, and sizzling orchestral breaks". [36][41] The song features verses by spoken word performer J. Ivy who offers comments of upliftment. So many extracurricular angles, so little time; so let's just suffice it to say that College Dropout is the first great hip-hop album of the still pre-pubescent 2004. Scrobbling is when Last.fm tracks the music you listen to and automatically adds it to your music profile. I was uncertain of my future. [69], Some reviewers were more qualified in their praise. [50][51], In its first week of release, the album sold 441,000 copies and debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, being held off the top spot by Norah Jones' second studio album Feels Like Home. would be greeted with indignant horror by fans. [26] Entertainment Weekly's Michael Endelman elaborated on West's avoidance of the then-dominant "gangsta" persona of hip hop: West delivers the goods with a disarming mix of confessional honesty and sarcastic humor, earnest idealism and big-pimping materialism. [129], With the album, West began to develop a following of listeners who could not relate to lyrics glorifying gangster lifestyle but still enjoyed rap music and connected more with his musings on family and love. West began making beats and rapping in the early 90s in his hometown of Chicago, Illinois, when he formed the rap group, Ye (born Kanye Omari West on June 8, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia), professionally known as Kanye West, is a Grammy award-winning American rapper, producer, singer, author, director, performanc, Ye (born Kanye Omari West on June 8, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia), professionally known as Kanye West, is a Grammy award-winning American rapper, producer, singer, author, director, performance artist and fashion designer. ^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. [40], "Never Let Me Down" is influenced by West's near-death car crash. [59] On the UK Albums Chart, the album peaked at number 12, and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) had certified it double platinum by November 25, 2004; this indicated shipments of 600,000 copies. Need help? "[127], According to DJBooth journalist Brad Callas, the album also "helped solidify chipmunk soul as not only the defining sound of the Roc-A-Fella era but also the most popular sub-genre in hip-hop". [36], On "Jesus Walks", West professes his belief in Jesus, while also discussing how religion is used by various people and how the media seems to avoid songs that address matters of faith while embracing compositions on violence, sex, and drugs. [14] "Through the Wire" was first available on West's Get Well Soon mixtape, released December 2002. Is your network connection unstable or browser outdated? [52] The College Dropout remained at the second spot behind Feels Like Home for two consecutive weeks, with 196,000 units sold in the second week and 132,000 in the third week, respectively. [32][33], The album begins with a skit featuring a college professor asking West to deliver a graduation speech. [66] At one point, "Two Words" was also intended to be released as a single, and a video for the song was filmed, and later uploaded by West online in 2009. Most of these are earlier versions of his memorable songs. Because it was a two-bedroom apartment, West was able to set up a home studio in one of the rooms and his bedroom in the other. Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. Diddy. And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, 2022 Cond Nast. [37] Gospel hymn with doo-wop elements "I'll Fly Away" precedes "Spaceship", a track with a relaxed beat containing a soulful Marvin Gaye sample. [91] In 2012, Complex named the album one of the classic albums of the last decade,[92] and the 20th best hip hop debut album ever. The skit is followed by "We Don't Care" featuring West comically celebrating drug life with lines like "We wasn't supposed to make it past 25, joke's on you, we still alive" and then criticizing its influence amongst children. That "Two Words" is sequestered (along with the chock-full-of-clever "Through the Wire") behind a painful stretch of three clunker skits in four tracks (with the song island, "School Spirit", one of the album's weakest) shows that Kanye hasn't quite soaked in the lesson of the Jay-Z album that made his reputation: less skits = longer shelf life. Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[35][132]. Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. [3] The Blueprint has been named by Rolling Stone as the 252nd greatest album of all time and the critical and financial success of the album generated substantial interest in West as a producer. [8][10], West's breakthrough came a year later on October 23, 2002, when, while driving home from a California recording studio after working late, he fell asleep at the wheel and was involved in a near-fatal car crash. For Kanye to make an album called [The] College Dropout it was more about having the guts to embrace who you are, rather than following the path society has carved out for you". (2007) by Consequence, A Kid Named Cudi (2008) by Kid Cudi, Asleep in the Bread Aisle (2009) by Asher Roth, Kendrick Lamar's self-titled first EP (2009), Camp (2011) by Childish Gambino, Cole World: The Sideline Story (2011) by J. Cole, When Fish Ride Bicycles (2011) by The Cool Kids, and Acid Rap (2013) by Chance the Rapper. [26][27][28] Music journalist Kelefa Sanneh wrote, "Throughout the album, Mr. West taunts everyone who didn't believe in him: teachers, record executives, police officers, even his former boss at the Gap". All rights reserved. Don't let society tell you, 'This is what you have to do. [11] The crash left him with a shattered jaw, which had to be wired shut in reconstructive surgery. [39] The first verse of the song is told through the eyes of a drug dealer seeking help from God, and it reportedly took over six months for West to draw inspiration for the second verse. One song lead to another, and by the end of the weekend, I was on like five songs. Strangely, the biggest names fare the worst, with Jay-Z already sounding groggy from retirement on "Never Let Me Down" and Ludacris sounding groggy from something less legal on the hook to "Breathe In Breathe Out". 50 in their best albums of 20002004. [5] "Family Business" is a soulful tribute to the godbrother of Tarrey Torae, one of the many collaborators in the album. Intent on pursuing a solo career, he signed a record deal with Roc-A-Fella and recorded the album over a period of four years, beginning in 1999. [93] Dagsavisen listed the album eleventh in its list of the top forty albums of the 2000s decade. [29] The next track, "Graduation Day", features Miri Ben-Ari on violin[34] and vocals by John Legend. Chart-topper "Slow Jamz" appears in a slightly longer (and slightly weaker) form featuring overkill Jamie Foxx and depleted Twista, but if you haven't reached your quota yet, it remains the best getting-it-on song ever written about getting-it-on songs. [65] "Spaceship" was planned to be the sixth single, but Def Jam decided to move on from The College Dropout's promotional campaign to begin marketing West's next album, Late Registration (2005). And when words fail, Kanye can always fall back on his day job, camouflaging even less-inspired lyrical moments with affably absurd beat constructions like the vocoder/strings/handclaps amalgamation that carries "The New Workout Plan" past its lyrical juvenilia. [80] The album elsewhere topped year-end lists by Rolling Stone,[81] Spin,[82] Vibe,[83] and PopMatters. Your current browser isn't compatible with SoundCloud. [56] By June 2014, the album had become West's best-selling album in the US, with domestic sales of 3,358,000 copies. Deleting the skits also cuts down on the strange logic of the album's anti-college stance-- someone should tell West that not everyone on the street has the ability and/or luck to make a living in the music biz. [6] Record companies ignored him because he did not portray the gangsta image prominent in mainstream hip hop at the time. [5][36] The song features singer Syleena Johnson and contains an interpolation of Lauryn Hill's "Mystery of Iniquity". [20], The song "School Spirit" was censored for the album because Aretha Franklin would not allow the rapper to sample her music without censorship being promised. It was first delayed to October 2003, then to January 2004, before finally being released to stores on February 10, 2004. [1] West came to achieve recognition with his contributions to Jay-Z's influential 2001 album The Blueprint. Mixtape downloaders have known this for a while, thanks to his whip-smart verses on "Heavy Hitters" and "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly", but College Dropout brings a new evidence file, whether he's probing creative tax accounting on "We Don't Care" or puncturing the air bag of designer materialism in "All Fall Down". Club, Nathan Rabin observed in the music "substance, social commentary, righteous anger, ornery humanism, dark humor, and even Christianity", calling it "one of those wonderful crossover albums that appeal to a huge audience without sacrificing a shred of integrity". She later said, "It was drummed into my head that college is the ticket to a good life but some career goals don't require college. [128] "It feels like that album birthed an entire sub-genre", Max Weinstein wrote in retrospect for Vibe, going on to say, "The palette of emotions was so broad, the depth of topics so searingly relevant, that it was bound to make an impression on any artist that heard it. Kanye West began his early production career in the mid-1990s, making beats primarily for burgeoning local artists, eventually developing a style that involved speeding up vocal samples from classic soul records. [79], The College Dropout was voted as the best album of the year by The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics. [77] Dave Heaton from PopMatters found it "musically engaging" and "a genuine extension of Kanye's personality and experiences",[36] while Hua Hsu of The Village Voice felt that his sped-up samples "carry a humble, human air", allowing listeners to "hear tiny traces of actual people inside". The ferocious "Two Words" up-ramps a Mandrill sample into an ominous choir and violin-fed war cry flexibly savage enough to allow Mos Def to spit about his politics, Kanye about his Grammys, and Freeway about Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Steven Seagal. [9] According to Capitol Record's A&R, Joe Weinberger, he was approached by West and almost signed a deal with him, but another person in the company convinced Capitol's president not to. You need to enable JavaScript to use SoundCloud. Analyze the fast-disappearing line between mainstream and underground hip-hop, as personified by College Dropout's guest appearances, and West's personal rap style. [8] After a series of meetings with Capitol Records, West was ultimately denied an artist deal. [84] Dutch magazine OOR named it the seventh best album of 2004. It avoided the usual plotlines about sex, money and violence and touched on everything from his faith to his fears of failure and other crises from his life. [11][35] The chorus and instrumentals sample a pitched up version of Chaka Khan's 1985 single "Through the Fire". Compare/contrast rise of hip-hop artist/producers with singer/songwriter movement of 1970s; Is Kanye West Neil Young or Neil Diamond? [126] Today commented that "The College Dropout, stood out in the rap landscape because of its atypical prose. [4] Serving as an in-house producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, West produced records for other artists from the label, including Beanie Sigel, Freeway, and Cam'ron. "The Design Evolution of Kanye West's Album Artwork: "Kanye West The Heavy Hitters, Get Well Soon (2003) Clinton Sparks' 30 Favorite Mixtapes", "Kanye West: How the Rapper Grew From 'Dropout' to 'Yeezus', "American album certifications Kanye West The College Dropout", "Kanye West is 'humbled' by fans as his debut turns ten", "The UK's Official Top 40 biggest rap albums of the Millennium revealed", "Does Kanye West's 'The College Dropout' Stand the Test of Time? I think that's when we did 'Last Call.' It has since been named by numerous publications as one of the greatest albums of all time, including Rolling Stone and NME, who ranked it at 74 and 273 respectively on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time lists, and is credited for popularizing the chipmunk soul and conscious rap subgenres in the 2000s. Pat said in reference to the Franklin sample: "That song would have been so weak if we didn't get that sample cleared". [46], The album's title is in part a reference to West's decision to drop out of college to pursue his dream of becoming a musician. As a result, certain tracks originally destined for the album were subsequently retracted, among them "Keep the Receipt" with Ol' Dirty Bastard and "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" with Consequence.