Late Registration is released

Why it matters

Late Registration came out August 30, 2005, on Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam. It is Kanye West's second album, eighteen months after The College Dropout. Kanye co-produced the whole record with the composer Jon Brion, who had previously scored Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love and had been doing film orchestral work, not rap. The combination was unusual and worked. The album is denser, more orchestrated, and more thematically expansive than College Dropout. "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" (the lead single, with a Shirley Bassey sample). "Gold Digger" with Jamie Foxx (the #1 hit). "Heard 'Em Say" with Adam Levine. "Touch the Sky" with Lupe Fiasco. "Hey Mama," the song about Donda West. Late Registration sold 860,000 copies in its first week and went triple platinum. It also won the 2006 Best Rap Album Grammy. The album is the second part of what Kanye himself has called his "college trilogy" (Dropout, Registration, Graduation), and it is the one where his ambition started to pull out of the chipmunk-soul-sample lane he had opened on Blueprint and into a broader sound. You can hear that pulling-out in real time on the album.