Kanye West is in the odd position of being commended for not being a gun-toting misogynist, as if simply being a black hip-hop artist without these "qualities" is worthy of a medal. Liberal plaudits are best directed elsewhere. In the week that his new album, Late Registration, sold 860,000 copies, West used a Hurricane Katrina telethon to condemn the relief effort, stating that "George Bush doesn't care about black people". This really is worthy of congratulation: more productive, surely, than the usual celebrity response of simpering a lot and blaming no one.
West's lyrics are witty and occasionally politically incisive, but it's his music that dazzles. "Heard 'Em Say" is a prime pick from his new album: flaunting an inspired piano riff, a catchy bass rumble and delightful gospel vocals, it's soulful, ultramodern, and uncontrollably head-bobbing. The flawed masterpiece that introduced a lot of people to West at Live 8 in Philadelphia, "Diamonds From Sierra Leone", is also worth checking out. It's a huge, bombastic, Shirley Bassey-sampling tale of bling and the mines that produced the rocks of the title.
Making two world-beating albums in a row is some achievement, and West's first, College Dropout, is his Old Testament: less polished, more unwieldy, yet crucial to understanding the religion of hip-hop's new saviour. The redemptive R'n'B of "Through the Wire" and the seductive "Slow Jamz" are highlights of his debut - available from iTunes (and everywhere else: West is as easy to find as a Gideon Bible in a hotel room).
Kanye West's melting pot of sounds never gets stale, further proof that, since the turn of the millennium, pop and hip-hop production has forged ground while men with guitars continue to drift out to sea. If your self-respect can handle it, download Britney Spears's "Toxic" and Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" (also on iTunes). There's more innovation in these two than in the whole of this year's Mercury Music Prize list.
