1. Kanye West

Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam

Kanye West is the most brilliant man in the music world -- just ask him. But on Late Registration, the man with the mouth proves he can do it all. With hits like "Gold Digger" and "Diamonds From Sierra Leone," he shows off his command of the studio but also his emotional appetite for different sounds, as if hip-hop could absorb every other kind of music and still remain hip-hop. He's still a decent-at-best MC, yet his music soars from the hardcore "Crack Music" to the bluesy "My Way Home," bringing in Jon Brion's vintage instruments and string sections. "Diamonds" meditates on the Africa-America slave-labor connection for a hit as strange and disturbing as the Stones' "Brown Sugar," with a better bass line. But West saves the best tracks for the final stretch, with the triple threat of "We Major," "Hey Mama" and "Gone," where he raps along with Cam'ron, Consequence and a sad, old Otis Redding sample. It's a sweepingly generous, absurdly virtuosic hip-hop classic.

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