Today marks the 10-year-anniversary of the modern classic
album - The College Dropout. The debut album of the then relatively
unknown Kanye West. The impact the album has left on music and popular culture
as a whole cannot be measured or compared - an album that totally redefined
hip-hop and our understanding of its culture.
From
a personal point of view this album resonates with me a lot, as around that
time was when I actually began listening to hip-hop with more purpose and a
certain level of understanding. College Dropout offered listeners
something completely new, a message and audience that hip-hop had never really
addressed. Okay, let’s set the scene here...a year prior to the release of
The College Dropout, an absolute colossal of an album dropped that shook
hip-hop and the music industry as a whole. That of course being 50 Cent's - Get
Rich or Die Tryin' - which completely annihilated every other album
that was released that year and defined 2003 as a whole. With it brought back
gangsta hip-hop to the mainstream market, similar to the way Snoop Dogg did ten
years prior. College Dropout on the other-hand was completely left-field,
not only to Get Rich or Die Tryin' but different to anything that was
being played at the time or anything that came before it.
It's
weird to think of a music world where Kanye West was relatively unheard of (at
a mass scale anyway) - back then he was the producer that no-one thought could
rap. Wearing pink polos and a backpack - unlike the present day pop-magnet,
drunk at award-shows and fighting paparazzi Kanye we're now used to.
Nonetheless, one thing that has always remained the same is his huge ego, Yeezy
always knew and believed he'd be a star. And, it was this album that got him to
this preeminent pop icon status he has today.
As an album College Dropout transformed
hip-hop, it provided a new sound and a new type of listener. The concepts that
Kanye was discussing was stuff we've never really heard of from a rapper before
- the whole underdog who's trying to succeed narrative spoke volumes and
resonated with us. A progressive album that didn't lend itself to its forefathers
before it, the whole "conscious rap" - yes it is conscious, but not
in the sense of being afro-centric and race-driven, but conscious in the sense
of one finding themselves despite their sociological restraints. As I get older
I begin to relate more with the album, especially now being a recent graduate
the skits and Kanye's experience's at University (College) resonate with me
even more. The whole rhetoric's of trying to make it in the real world
after the protective bubble that education creates, the issue of
self-consciousness and the obstacles of society. Are all issues that people of
that generation and this current generation are going through.
The more obvious point - the production, sampling
soul classics that were sped-up, a trend that later characterised hip-hop in
the years to come - notably being the "Kanye sound". The key to the
album's success is its singles - breakthrough songs like 'Through the Wire',
'Jesus Walks' and 'All Falls Down', all of which deal with concepts that
present a persona that listeners can relate to. Other likable and fun singles
like 'Slowjamz' and 'The New Workout Plan' added the necessary charming sheen
to the album. Not forgetting the now cult classics - 'Spaceship', 'We Don't
Care' and 'Family Business' working as the compound that made the album so
popular among listeners. As West commented on the album - "My persona is
that I'm the regular person. Just think about whatever you've been through in
the past week, and I have a song about that on my album".
Looking at it 10 years on, I feel as though I now
understand his vision of what he was trying to achieve and is still achieving.
I'd go as far as saying he's certainly the greatest artist of this generation,
cause really and truly he's the only artist that we or in this respect, myself,
has seen from the beginning and witnessed their growth as an artist - with the
College Droput being the blueprint of his success. While it isn't my favourite Kanye album, it certainly is a classic album that revolutionised
and reinvigorated hip-hop.
(Subscribe and follow me on twitter @Gezza_O)
Gezza...
