Imagine if Pharrell Williams had actually crossed over from being lauded beatmaker and ubiquitous guest rapper to pop star in his own right, and you've discovered the space Kanye West inhabits right now.
As this album is released, he has no less than three singles in the US Top 20, including that nation's Number One. That record, "Slow Jamz" by Twista, and "Through The Wire", the Chaka Khan-sampling West solo single, both appear here, while Alicia Keys' fabulous, shimmering delight "You Don't Know My Name", the only one of the three he doesn't rap on, is the absentee.
We're clearly seeing the emergence of a new hip hop phenomenon here, but Kanye West's has been the name on the hip hop nation's lips for three years. Alongside Just Blaze he helped redefine rap production with his work on Jay-Z's storming "The Blueprint" album in 2001, throwing the emphasis back on sampling after the genre had shied away from its roots when exorbitant clearance percentages stymied intuitive creativity.
After all of the above, it's perhaps something of a surprise that "The College Dropout" not only lives up to its billing, but often surpasses it. Dr Dre may be the most successful example of a producer who raps a bit and has gone on to helm his own albums, Pharrell the most currently flavoursome. But West puts himself into the upper echelons of his beats and rhymes peers, and turns in a record that will be held in as enduringly high regard as rapping DJ classics like Pete Rock's albums with CL Smooth, and Diamond D's late golden age masterpiece "Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop".
While the expected array of star mates turn up - Jay-Z, Mos Def, Ludacris, Common, Talib Kweli and Freeway are all present and correct - West is the star of his own show. He has a story to tell, his near-death car crash last October supplying the motivation for "Through The Wire" - recorded when his jaw was still wired up. "Never Let Me Down" includes the couplet "I can't complain what the accident did to my left eye/Cos look what an accident did to Left Eye".
That's the sort of level West pitches his rhymes at: never out-reaching himself with verbal pyrotechnics (he leaves that to the more celebrated rap stylists he employs as guests) or getting into muddles of metaphors, he keeps it simple. The music throughout is adventurous yet accessible, not too reliant on his stylistic tic of speeded-up old loops, and ready to embrace avant garde string-n-bass ("The New Workout Plan") or re-record a Lauryn Hill vocal sample ("All Falls Down") as required. His sense of adventure, even while he works within commercial constraints, is admirable; his ear for what works, lyrically as well as musically, finely attuned.
There will be few better albums released this year.
