While fans of West's radio material may have clamored for the massive hit "Gold Digger," it wouldn't have fit well with the personnel at hand. His choice of "Bring Me Down," for which he repurposed lyrics from an unreleased tune called "Wack Niggaz" which featured Talib Kweli, is a curious one, although it could have been selected to utilize the orchestra. The notes are few, but the effect is big. They also add a classy if understated touch to "All Falls Down," one of West's best storytelling tracks.
On "Jesus Walks," the live orchestra performs at its peak, as there is an extra sense of urgency to the performance. His fingers work even faster when closing out the upbeat "Workout Plan." The material here covers his first two albums, The College Dropout and Late Registration (of which he obviously based the name of this album), with the mixture being just over 50-percent of the latter. A-Trak, who serves as West's tour DJ, puts together fanciful scratches, one of which perfectly introduces GLC to come on-stage to perform his verse on "Drive Slow" by scratching his "What it do?" line effortlessly. One of the best performances is from someone who never utters a word. The rest of the instrumentation was pre-recorded. Curiously, the orchestra and the DJ, aside from Legend's brief appearance, are the only band on-stage. Sprinkle in a few guest appearances from the likes of an up-and-coming kid named Lupe Fiasco, who was starting to make a little noise in the industry, and John Legend, whose career already was well past being a session pianist and background singer, and you have a well-balanced live show. On his first live album, released officially only in Europe, West ditches the hypemen and instead enlists the help of an all-female orchestra. Leave it to Kanye West to make live hip-hop exciting again. Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs.
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