The College Kicked-Out

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The College Kicked-Out
Studio album by Danny!
Released	November 2, 2004 (U.S.)
Recorded	September 2004
Genre	Hip-Hop
Length	57:31
Label	Badenov Records/1911 Music
Producer	Danny!
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link
Danny! chronology
The College Kicked-Out (2004) F.O.O.D. (2005)

The College Kicked-Out is the debut album from American rapper/producer Danny! (see 2004 in music). Originally slated for an October 12 release date, The College Kicked-Out finally saw the light of day on November 2 after being delayed by bootlegging. The album showcased sole production from Danny, establishing him as a notable producer from South Carolina; The College Kicked-Out was also significant for not featuring any guest appearances, making Danny's debut record a completely solo effort.

Both the album's cover art and title are a tongue-in-cheek reference to the 2003 grade-altering controversy at Claflin University that resulted in Danny being accused of not only orchestrating the entire operation, but of accumulating a substantial amount of money from tampering with the institution's academic records; Danny was subsequently expelled. The College Kicked-Out was just twelve days shy of being released an approximate year after Danny's expulsion from the university.

The album was the first record released under the 1911 Music/Badenov Records imprint which, according to Danny, is a record label in name only. The "1911" is a reference to the year his fraternity, Kappa Alpha Psi, was founded, and "Badenov" is obviously homage paid to Boris Badenov, an antagonist from Jay Ward's Rocky & Bullwinkle series of which Danny is an avid fan.

[edit] Overview

[edit] Development

Following his expulsion from Claflin University in late 2003, Danny took a brief respite from music to focus on securing full-time employment and cleaning up his tarnished reuputation. Returning to the production side primarily to generate additional income, Danny would eventually become comfortable enough to begin writing lyrics again and, after scrapping his original concept for his debut (then known as The Danny Swain LP), Danny decided to chronicle the events in his life post-Claflin in a semi-autobiographical manner.

It wasn't until the release of Kanye West's The College Dropout in February 2004 that Danny officially decided to change the title of his album to The College Kicked-Out, a clever allusion to the scandal that took place at Claflin only a few months prior and nearly derailed Danny's career.

[edit] Music

Contrary to the title, the album never actually gives any insight to the events leading up to Danny's expulsion from Claflin; rather, The College Kicked-Out is, at face value, a formulaic hip-hop record (Danny slyly references such a formula at the beginning of "Second Time Around", proclaiming it his "obligatory [club] track") with much of its content being self-referential. The songs that do allude to the grade-changing controversy find Danny openly apologizing to his loved ones for letting them down.

Handling double duties as both producer and MC, much of Danny's many boasts throughout the record make reference to his talents both behind the boards and in front of the mic, and his effortless way of juggling the two. Other topics on The College Kicked-Out include apathy toward American social issues, fickle fans and paternity woes. Danny merges conversational rhyme patterns with polysyllabic inflections, a style he has admitted borrowing from Eminem.

Production-wise, Danny primarily uses sped-up soul samples (á la RZA or Just Blaze) on The College Kicked-Out and doesn't deviate too much from that particular style throughout the entire record.

[edit] Reception

Despite the fact that Danny's debut album resembled Kanye West's The College Dropout (2004) in name alone, many members of the hip-hop community made hasty comparisons -- some positive, but mostly negative -- between the two artists.

With many people mistaking the album's title as copycatting rather than tongue-in-cheek humor, The College Kicked-Out was initially met with mixed reviews as some members of the hip-hop community criticized Danny for not taking himself seriously enough (in "I Need A Publicist", for example, Danny mentions that he's willing to do anything for his album's promotion, from dressing in a Tin Man suit for his fans to faking his own death) to merit a full-length album. Others felt that, compared to his contemporaries, Danny wasn't all that adept or complex lyrically. But perhaps the most well-documented criticism of all came from listeners who, becoming familiar with Danny for the first time, believed he was trying to emulate a style and sound that had already been established by Kanye West. In their defense, these critics have named both the blatantly derivative title as well as a similar rapper-and-producer-that-employs-usage-of-soul-samples motif as examples of Danny's mimicking; further disdain was fueled by Danny's decision, intentionally or not, to utilize samples that West had himself previously incorporated in demo recordings preceding The College Dropout. Danny, however, would later achieve major success as a producer and rapper in his own right, eventually escaping the unfair accusations with each subsequent release.

Ultimately The College Kicked-Out was seen as a breath of fresh air by listeners who were growing weary of the minimalistic hip-hop songs that were beginning to gain prominence around the time the record was released. Many also applauded Danny for his production efforts and even compared him to West in a positive light (it should be noted that not all comparisons to Kanye West were derogatory, much like Nas being compared to Rakim during the recording of Illmatic, or fellow producer/rapper Black Milk's frequent comparisons to the late J Dilla upon the release of Popular Demand). Retrospectively, music critics have gone on to say that though The College Kicked-Out is neither a masterpiece nor Danny's definitive album, it is a "pretty solid debut"^[1] overall.

The album not only helped establish Danny's freewheeling and emotional persona (a sharp contrast from the cynical and extremely sarcastic characteristics he would reveal on subsequent albums), but also helped reiterate the ethic of DIY used by many emerging underground hip-hop artists at the time, such as Little Brother, Lupe Fiasco and Tanya Morgan, who too would see moderate popularity on the Internet translate into a recording contract with major or independent record labels.

[edit] Availability

Due to the lack of a sufficient budget, only a few hundred copies of The College Kicked-Out were initially pressed up. The record was available only on compact disc and the original copies -- complete with liner notes that featured both sample information and phony album credits (for example, sample clearance services are credited to a Hugh Jazfynes, a pun on hip-hop artists having to pay "huge-ass fines" should they get sued for failure to clear samples) -- are very rare and are now considered collector's items. The College Kicked-Out has since been pirated in the wake of Danny's 2006 breakthrough album Charm, making legitimate copies that much more difficult to authenticate.

Following the mostly-negative reaction to The College Kicked-Out at the time, Danny recorded a bonus song, "Clap Back", and added the track to the second and final pressing of the album in December 2004. "Clap Back" is the only song on either edition of The College Kicked-Out to directly address the grade-changing incident at his former alma mater and is considered the "bridge", in terms of artistic direction, between Danny's debut album and its follow-up, the darker and more scathing F.O.O.D. Versions of The College Kicked-Out with "Clap Back" included are extremely rare.

[edit] Track listing

[edit] Bonus track

• "Clap Back" (available on the second U.S. pressing), 3:55

[edit] Credits

• Danny! - Executive Producer, Producer, Composer, Featured Vocals
• Steve Slavich - Engineer

[edit] Trivia

• Danny alludes to the original release date of The College Kicked-Out (October 12) in the first verse of "My Baby".
• Contrary to songs such as "I'm Movin' Out" and various tracks from later albums, Danny does not have children of his own; "Zoe" is a running gag Danny has admitted to employing as an allusion to an ex-girlfriend's fabricated pregnancy, a situation he has jokingly referred to as a "close call".
• The recording process of The College Kicked-Out was reportedly completed in only two sessions; supposedly, Danny recorded the album in sequential order, covering the first seven songs in one session and the remaining seven songs in another.
• The cover art from The College Kicked-Out is taken from a page out of Les Memoirs, Claflin University's yearbook. Though the photo was shot during his freshman year of college, Danny's youthful appearance leads many people to erroneously believe that the page was lifted from one of Danny's high school yearbooks.
• Several songs from The College Kicked-Out incorporate samples that have been played in reverse; namely, "Intro", "Talk To You (remix)" and "My Baby".
• "Grateful" borrows its two verses' cadences from the first and third verse of Jay-Z's "Allure", respectively.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• "The College Kicked-Out" audio snippets courtesy of AOL Music
• "The College Kicked-Out" lyrics courtesy of the Original Hip-Hop Lyrics Archive (OHHLA.com)