#100...

Kanye West - The College Dropout

Well, what can be said about this man? The mentalist. "The C from the CRS" has sorted himself out now after a pretty crazy year - it won't make this list but My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a cracker.

But lest we forget, he started off with a 'cracker' too. Kicking off with one of many (too many?) skits,The College Dropout arguably shifted the "gangstaaaaa" persona off of rap music altogether - more humanity, less "guns 'n' bitches" - redefining the genre and opening it up for more acts to follow. And each single released from the album just built up the hype around Mr West. Maybe a little too much.

However, West's flow, rhyme and diversity in sample use told us all that he was here to stay.

Key tracks: "Jesus Walks"; "Slow Jamz"; "Through The Wire"; "All Falls Down"

Final Thought: Although long, "Last Call" is a clever way of letting all of us know how he got to where he was then - endless thanks to the jiggaman himself, Jay-Z, for believing in the young pretender. And it's a perfect way to teach all those bairns out there that if you try hard enough, and believe in yourself, you can achieve anything.

Consequence of Sound's Top 100 Albums of All Time.

I think of myself as quite musically diverse now and then - and then I talk to certain people and see conversations on lovely FaceBook, only to find I'm wrong. Drastically wrong. Quite embarrassingly drastically wrong.

So, in order to further broaden these musical horizons - and get some more useless knowledge and trivia into this already nearly full-to-the-brim mind - I've decided that I'm going to listen to Consequence of Sound's Top 100 Albums of All Time, and document my opinion of each album. I chose this particular list because it's not Q ("Hi, we love Radiohead. And Kings of Leon. A little bit too much."), Rolling Stone ("We're good at changing our opinion every ten years.") or NME ("We're good at changing our opinion every week."). Nice and varied, is this list. And it was made in September of 2010, so it's relatively up to date. Just in case you want to argue/disagree/laugh/cry/have a gander. Or even join me on this journey.

I've already started with #100, which is Kanye West's 2004 debut album, "The College Dropout". And after a few other albums, your first article will be written very soon.

But anyway, I hope you enjoy, and feel free to throw in your tuppence hither and thither.

TB