Late Registration is the critically acclaimed sophomore studio album by American hip hop artist Kanye West, released August 30, 2005 on Roc-A-Fella Records in the United States. Recording sessions for the album took place over the course of a year at various studios located New York City and Hollywood, California. The album was released to critical acclaim and entered the charts at number 1. The album sold over 860,000 copies in its first week, the highest first week sales in the Def Jam label history, until West broke his own record with his follow-up album Graduation (2007), which sold in excess of 950,000 in its first week.
Late Registration won several awards, including the Grammy Award for "Best Rap Album". Rolling Stone magazine named it the year's best album and awarded it a rare five-star rating. Along with its great critical acclaim, the album was highly successful commercially, selling in excess of 4 million domestic copies. The album spawned the number 1 single "Gold Digger", featuring Jamie Foxx, and the award winning singles "Diamonds from Sierra Leone", with Jay-Z, and "Touch the Sky" with Lupe Fiasco. It was re-released in a "deluxe edition" both digitally and in CD form in the UK, US, and Australia. The US deluxe version includes a remix for the single "Diamonds From Sierra Leone", which earned considerable commercial success. Despite the acclaim gained from the first album. Late Registration is widely considered as West's breakthrough album. It is also considered by fans and critics his best album.
Conception
Late Registration is the second entry in Kanye West's planned tetralogy of education-themed studio albums. Dedicated towards overcoming the sophomore slump which commonly afflicts rap artists that many expected him to experience following the critical and commercial success of The College Dropout , the album sees a progression in West's lyrical dexterity in addition to an expansion of his musical palette. At the time, the focal point of West's production style was its usage of sped-up vocal samples from soul records. However, due in part to the widespread recognition of The College Dropout , the technique had come to be emulated by a myriad of producers. It had reached the point where West felt that not only had the music landscape become oversaturated with his signature style, but it had also become a crutch to him and it was time to seek out a new sound.
A longtime fan of the English trip hop group Portishead, Kanye had been significantly influenced by Roseland NYC Live , the band's 1998 live album with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Early in his career, the live album had inspired him to incorporate string arrangements into his hip hop production. Though West had not been able to afford live instruments beyond violin riffs provided by Israeli violinist Miri Ben-Ari around the time of his debut album, its subsequent commercial success enabled him to hire his very own string orchestra. For his sophomore album, West juxtaposed the lush, intricate melodies of string section with the hard, pounding drum rhythms of hip-hop and used the polymerization for the foundation of his rapping.
In order to facilitate this sonic transition, Kanye collaborated with American film score composer Jon Brion, who served as the album's co-executive producer for several tracks. West had been exposed to Brion's craftsmanship while watching the American sci-fi drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind , whose soundtrack he had composed music for, as well as through listening to songs he had produced for Tidal and When the Pawn... , studio albums of alternative singer-songwriter Fiona Apple, another one of West's favorite musicians and sources of musical inspiration for the album. Although Brion had absolutely no prior experience whatsoever in creating hip-hop records, he and West quickly found that they had potent musical chemistry after their very first afternoon in the studio together where they discovered that neither confined his musical knowledge and vision to one specific genre. When questioned if his presence made Late Registration any less hip-hop, Brion replied, "There are colors and ideas that make different from average hip-hop, but Kanye is already different from the average hip-hop guy. He's got this sense of pop record-making which is really solid, and he likes tracks with a lot of things going on in them — which is not necessarily common for hip-hop. He was already barking up that tree. This is definitely not just a hip-hop album. But it is also by no means overtly arty, or non-hip-hop. I don't think its a weird record by any means."
Recording
Kanye took over a year and devoted approximately two million dollars towards the construction of Late Registration . The majority of the recording sessions for the album took place at Sony Music Studios in New York City and at The Record Plant in Hollywood, California. He began working in the studio on his sophomore effort immediately after he finished touring with Usher on the R&B singer's The Truth Tour . By November 2004, West had completed nearly seventy-five percent of the album. However he felt unsatisfied with its outcome and in March of the following year, he brought in Jon Brion, which drastically altered the project's direction. The album's recording sessions between West and Brion were largely exploratory and experimental, with the two experimenting with a broad spectrum of sounds. West would construct a song's basic structure, bringing in basic samples, drum beat programming and occasionally unfinished rap verses, and after brainstorming over the myriad of musical avenues it could be taken, would then select from a variety of unique instruments that Brion provided and played and attempt to incorporate their distinct sonancy into the song's texture. West elaborated that while configuring Late Registration , he envisioned the creation of a film; visualizing the songs as scenes, outlining each in such a way that they efficiently convey their respective social or introspective context, and ensuring that all synchronized perfectly within the fabric of the complete set.
Aside from Brion co-helming the overall project, Late Registration also expresses a diverse assembly of collaborations for its individual tracks. Kanye chose his guest artists based on the effect each of their voices had on him when he heard them, citing the serene vocals of Adam Levine, the trademark sound of Brandy, and the superb lyricism of Lupe Fiasco and Paul Wall as primary examples. Adam Levine, lead vocalist of the Californian pop rock band Maroon 5 is featured on the album's opening track, "Heard 'Em Say." The two had previously collaborated when Maroon 5 commissioned Kanye to produce a remix for "This Love" and later developed a friendship while sitting together on a flight to Rome for the 2004 MTV Europe Music Awards. While playing songs from his sophomore album on his iPod for him during the flight, West came across the demo for "Heard 'Em Say" to which Levine added a R&B hook he had recently written and thought was perfect for it. The track was recorded quickly right after the 47th Grammy Awards ceremony, as Levine only had a couple of free hours available for time in the studio, and Brion was able to translate the two compositions in a matter of hours. Adam Levine later described his collaboration with West as "a really cool, organic process" and commented that "Kanye's lyrics were beautiful."
Though many surmised that West conceived "Gold Digger" after watching Jamie Foxx's Oscar-winning portrayal of Ray Charles in the biographical film Ray , he had actually recorded the song long before the movie was even developed. West originally produced and recorded the song in Ludacris's home in Atlanta, Georgia for Shawnna's 2004 debut album Worth Tha Weight and had written the chorus from a female first-person viewpoint. However, for reasons unknown, Shawnna passed on the beat. Not wanting to let it go to waste, West decided to write the two verses for the song himself, this time from a male's point-of-view. About a year later, right before "Gold Digger" was set to be released, West decided to add a third verse and in a week the new song was recorded and mastered at Sony Music Studios in New York. The idea of employing Jamie Foxx specifically to sing an interpolation of Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" in place of its initial sample did in fact arise from West seeing Ray with his friend John Mayer. Foxx's vocals were recorded over many takes; one version, he sang from start to finish, but the track was retracted as his performance didn't coincide well with the song's instrumentation. After recording another version, Jamie decided to re-record it once more as he felt it contained too many explicit lyrics. Once the track was in place, it was layered with additional instruments provided by Brion and individually selected by West. By the end of their very first studio session together, the pair had completed the basic tracks for final version of "Gold Digger."
Houston-based rapper Paul Wall appears alongside West and his G.O.O.D. Music label-mate GLC on "Drive Slow." The two had met while posing at for a photo shoot in an August issue of King magazine in a special spread titled "Coming Kings". West visited Houston two weeks late and the pair soon built up a friendship. Eventually, West offered Wall an open spot on his album which he immediately accepted and the
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