The Kanye West Transition

I was listening to some old Kanye albums with a friend. He's a bit older than me, so his first exposure to Kanye was Late Registration and mine was Graduation.

Those two records, separated by two years, are from two different eras. The Late Registration Kanye was still in conscious backpacker mode. He was a bit less self-serious, filling his albums with skits. The Graduation era was a transition period, away from giddy soul loops and adhering to psuedo-morals, and into the Kanye of today.

Production was always a priority, but after Late Registration Kanye became an auteur of sound, shapeshifting from aesthetic to aesthetic and making striking statements. He is now a Warholian character, obvious universalism speckled with winking self-seriousness. He writes his "curses in cursive" and urges a "French-ass restaurant" to "hurry up with my damn croissants!"