Kanye West - Late Registration (Clean Version) CD (2005) (CD, Clean)

With Late Registration, Dr. West has indeed delivered the medicine. And once again, he did the only way he can: with honesty, humor and his conviction in continuing to prove himself by making great music. Enlisting composer/producer Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann) to lend his skills to the album's production, West's newest offering is a big album in every sense of the word. His trademark sample-based arrangements have expanded to include live instrumentation. West has always been an artist who challenges not only himself, but his audience and his fellow musicians with new ideas and new ways of expressing the joys and sorrows of life through music. Late Registrationdoes just that as it takes down avenues and alleyways filled with sound and vision. Throughout, Late Registration's sheer depth of musicality is what's most impressive. Dark and eerie at times, uplifting in others - tracks like "Touch The Sky" and "Celebration" come to mind--the album finds Kanye at once madly in love with hip-hop music, and fighting with it like a lover scorned - trying to push it's boundaries, to see how far it will go. A daunting task, indeed. But it seems as though West--as stressed as he is--is more than up to the task.