Rather than digging in crates for obscure R&B and soul records or seeking out artists in the indie-sphere (as he did with Portishead and Fiona Apple for LR), Ye turned his sights on his immediate surroundings, which in the mid-2000s were the huge rock bands with whom he increasingly shared the stage. He started the whole chipmunk soul trend and rode it to paydirt, but it was played out by 2007.
Ever the restless creative, Ye was able to plan a full overhaul of his sound for the first time in his career. In contrast, Graduation would drop just over two years after Late Registration, and it was Ye's first to consist entirely of material he had planned as solo work. That's a big reason why those albums were able to be released just 16 months apart. Ye spent five years working on his debut before it came out, and already had a good deal of Late Registration in the works by the time he hit the studio for its recording- many of its songs were originally intended for other artists who passed on them, and West simply updated and Brion-ed them. Especially considering the few instances of glo-uppery on "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" and "Touch The Sky," Late Registration just sounds like College Dropout with more clout and a larger budget. Thematically, Ye's even more on the same page, touching on many of the same issues- drug dealing, religion, debt, family ties, and of course, education- as he did on his debut album. This resulted in more lush live instrumentation, and some critics have even gone so far as to call the album "baroque" as a result, but the sample credits (including Bill Withers, Curtis Mayfield, Ray Charles, Gil Scott-Heron) reveal that the song's skeletons aren't that different from West's first batch of solo tracks. Whereas The College Dropout was almost entirely self-produced, and largely built on the same "chipmunk soul" sound West had popularized before his solo career, Late Registration brought on composer Jon Brion as a co-producer on all but five of its tracks (not counting skits). Yes, there were also changes between Ye's first two albums. The first one of these momentum-changing stylistic flips came between 2005's Late Registration and 2007's Graduation, the latter of which turns ten today. Every Ye fan remembers where they were when "Love Lockdown" first took them aback as a new single, or when Yeezus fell out of the sky and upended expectations. Kanye West's career has been defined by major, unpredictable shifts between albums.
Ten years on, "Graduation" stands as Kanye's first major stylistic shift, as well as his most ill-advised.