Kayne West: The College Dropout

By REBECCA BARRY

Herald rating: * * * *

Kayne West is better known for his dexterity than his flow, but that looks set to change with his debut album.

The Chicago native has produced everything from sinewy, piano-friendly beats for Alicia Keys (You Don't Know My Name), throbbing hip-hop anthems for Ludacris (Stand Up) and Jay-Z (Take Over) to silky, intelligent beats for Talib Kweli (Get By).

And while this release won't propel him into the mainstream, it should appeal to hip-hop fans regardless of their East Coast, West Coast affiliations.

On Spaceship he is just streetsmart as his album guest Jay-Z - "After I **** the manager up, then I'm going shorten the register up" - but elsewhere seems less menacing, shunning the pimptastic rule book of his contemporaries. Meanwhile the production relies on a spartan concoction of twisted funk and sophisticated gospel, his guests including both Mos Def and the Harlem Boys Choir, his lyrics spanning equally ambitious territory: the dangers of drugs, his religious convictions and the car crash that nearly killed him last year.

The frequent spoken interludes get the skip treatment after a while and it could have been condensed from its 20 tracks, but College Dropout deserves to catapult West on to centre stage.