The College Dropout

The production is bright and full of upbeat soul samples reworked into propulsive beats, goofy drops, and infectious hooks. He's great a musical collage and creating exciting beats, texture, and atmosphere - less great as a rapper, he's pretty agile but his tone is nasal and the flow is like a lesser version of the conscious rappers of the early 2000s. The verses cover a pretty wide range, from funny and sardonic to darkly angry and excoriating, announcing the themes he'd continue to explore through his work, some interesting, some overly self-involved and boringly biographic & mythologyzing- it's all there, just not yet batshit. His innovation is really pushing the very personal vulnerable self-exposition that is also very culturally of its Livejournal confessional era. Even the arrogant projection of a larger than life persona is, at this point, aspirational wishcasting that reveals the itch he'd destroy himself scratching.

Rhythm was good and much of the lyrics formed an entertaining story. But it’s too bad someone with so much influence chooses to use it to knock education, widely understood to be the best opportunity to escape poverty.

Very 2000s sound, I really liked a lot of these songs!

The album was just too long for my liking with all the skits, and some songs were way longer than they needed to be

4 ⭐️

Another "attempt to separate the art from the artist" , but it's hard... a great album from a truly shitty individual, and I'mma let you finish because he was a piece of shit long before his mental illnesses took hold in the last 10 or so years.

4 stars for the album (good the great but not his best) / 0 stars for the antisemitic Nazi turd he is / 2.5 stars to split the difference but in this case I'mma round it down.

I liked "Family Business". The rest was okay. The skits in between were a bit annoying.

Damn you, you racist pig. Why do you have to make decent music?

Regardless of what you think about him as a person, Kanye West has always been quite the genius when it comes to rap music and The College Dropout shows this, even from the very start. The lyrics could range from quite a lot of different topics from religion to education and many of the lyrics in all of these songs were really smart and cool sounding like he wasn't afraid to talk about what he wanted to talk about. The production here was also really good and even the skit tracks fit really well. This one might be along one at a 76 minute runtime but it did more than enough to keep me interested. This truly is a great one.
Best Song: Two Words
Worst Song: Breathe In Breathe Out

I just can't with Kanye. Jesus Walks is a banger, I'll give him that, but the rank hypocrisy is so annoying I can't really enjoy it.

Sometimes, he has some of the best lyrics in hip hop. Other times his flow is clunky, or so self aggrandizing as to be eye-rollingly tacky. Overall, I feel like it's an uneven album. Too long, for sure, but with enough quality songs that I can't hate too much. I'd give it a 3.5 if I could.

Way better than I expected. Or hoped, honestly. Haha. 3.5

Talentless dross

Nope.

Fuck this antisemitic ass hat.

0/5

Meh. Some great stuff here and he’s obviously a hell of a producer, but I won’t ever return to this. My ceiling for hip-hop strikes again.

3/5

Ignoring West's current behaviour, this is still a good listen. Overlong and too many skits but there's some strong stuff here

Yet another ex-1001 album!™
http://1001albumsyoumusthearbeforeyoudie.wikidot.com/album-artists-a-z-ex

I was going to skip this one, coz Kanye West is a bit of a knobhead these days, but then I wondered if I was missing something with it, so had a listen... it started off fine for a hip hop pop rap album, but once the skits bled too much into the later tracks, I lost all interest.

Only made it half way through. Couldn’t stand it any longer.

Ugh. This album got me through some tough times, and was the first album that made me realize rap is more than bling and women. But man he is one terrible human, and you can already see it on some.of these songs. Now more than ever I can't tell if he's a genius or just an idiot who every one looked into the meani of his music a little too much

I have an annoyingly deep connection to this album. In every sense of the word, I do find it to be a timeless classic. I think that THIS version of Kanye West, before every single disgraceful and disgusting thing he's done and said in the 20 years since this album has dropped, is Kanye at his best, and this is his best album of the College Trilogy. It's a genuine 5, and I'm gonna keep it there.

It would be incredibly easy for me to rate this a 1 based on who he is now, in the year 2024, and move on, and give myself the moral brownie points. I just cannot bring myself to do it; I still basically know every line to every song on here, I still think the production is off the charts, and... to be completely honest, THIS version of Kanye West on this album just resonates with me still. Family Business, Jesus Walks, All Falls Down, Through The Wire... these are all obnoxiously good, and they all remind me of why the guy became a superstar to begin with. I miss that guy, not the anti-semitic Nazi-apologizing Trump supporter he's become.

Let me be extra clear: I did not stream the album when I wrote this review. I'm not giving him another cent. I wrote all of this without re-listening, because I know this album that deeply. I still believe it to be a 5, even if the man himself has dropped into the negatives.

So, uh... yeah, I listened to Desire, I Want To Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek today instead. Super cool album with a lot of 2000s influence clearly present throughout; definitely worth a listen, and worth all the hype it got in 2023. I'd probably give it like a 4.5, that I'd likely round up after another listen or two.

Man, it's too bad that the crazy eventually completely won the battle with talent in this dude.

I'm not listening to this dude. Not gonna give him the $ 0.0002 or whatever streaming royalty you get. Kanye West sucks in so many ways all of us should do everything we can to reduce whatever influence this idiot mouthbreather has left.