Haven't been seeing enough of the hermit-like Kanye West over the last year and a half? Worn out The College Dropout, the mix-CDs, and the ultra-essential re-mastered College Dropout? Then check out College Dropout Video Anthology, a two-disc hodgepodge of sight 'n' sound. One disc contains seven audio tracks of wildly varying quality, the other is West's videos. Both offer support for the arguments both of die-hard fans who consider West's ascent a seismic cultural event, and of haters who fear he's devolved into a pompous caricature of an egotistical artiste.
The project's centerpiece is the grandiosely billed "Jesus Walks Trilogy," which contains all three versions of the "Jesus Walks" video, as well as an unintentionally funny making-of documentary in which West humbly suggests that he could be making one (or more) of the greatest videos of all time. West certainly deserves credit for pushing spirituality onto Top 40 radio, but the "Jesus Walks" videos' half-baked jumble of "provocative" religious iconography feels like a stale rehash of what Madonna was doing 20 years ago. The best West videos, like "Through The Wire" and "Two Words," pack the same visceral emotional power as his music, but Anthology's cheesy excesses suggest that a little time apart might be the best possible thing for the painfully overexposed West and his fans.