title: Tangier

text: Due to its Christian past before the Muslim conquest, it remains a titular see of the Roman Catholic Church. Originally, the city was part of the larger Roman province of Mauretania Caesariensis, which included much of North Africa. Later the area was subdivided, with the eastern part keeping the former name and the newer part receiving the name of Mauretania Tingitana. It is not known exactly at what period there may have been an episcopal see at Tangier in ancient times, but in the Middle Ages Tangier was used as a titular see (i.e., an honorific fiction for the appointment of curial and auxiliary bishops), placing it in Mauretania Tingitana. For the historical reasons given above, one official list of the Roman Curia places the see in Mauretania Caesarea.


title: Tangier

text: Towards the end of the 3rd century, Tangier was the scene of the martyrdoms of St.Marcellus, mentioned in the Roman Martyrology on 30 October, and of St.Cassian, mentioned on 3 December.


title: Tangier

text: Under the Portuguese, the diocese of Tangier was a suffragan of Lisbon but, in 1570, it was united with the diocese of Ceuta. Six Bishops of Tangier from this period are known, the firstwho did not reside in his seein 1468. During the era of the French and Spanish protectorates over Morocco, Tangier was the residence of the Prefect Apostolic of Morocco, the mission having been founded on 28 November 1630 and entrusted to the Friars Minor. At the time, it had a Catholic church, several chapels, schools and a hospital. The Prefecture Apostolic was raised to the status of Vicariate Apostolic of Marocco on 14 April 1908. On 14 November 1956, it became the Archdiocese of Tangier.


title: Tangier

text: The city also has the Anglican church of Saint Andrew. Since independence in 1956, the European population has decreased substantially. In the years leading up to the First World War, European Christians formed almost a quarter the population of Tangier. The city also is still home to a small community of Moroccan Christians, as well as a small group of foreign Roman Catholic and Protestant residents.


title: Tangier

text: Jews have a long history in Tangier. In the years leading up to the First World War, Jews formed almost a quarter the population of Tangier. According to the World Jewish Congress there were only 150 Moroccan Jews remaining in Tangier.


title: Tangier

text: Tangierians regard football as the primary entertainment when it comes to sport-material. There are several football fields around the city. Tangier would have been one of the host cities for the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations football tournament, which would be played at the new Ibn Batouta Stadium and in other cities across Morocco, until Morocco was banned from participating the Africa Cup of Nations due to their denial. Basketball comes the second most practised sport in Tangier. The city is known for their local teams IRT, Ajax Tanger, Juventus Tangier and so on.


title: Tangier

text: National Cricket Stadium is the only top-class cricket stadium in Morocco. Stadium hosted its first International Tournament from 12 to 21 August 2002. Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka competed in a 50-overs one day triangular series. The International Cricket Council has granted international status to the Tangier Cricket Stadium, official approval that will allow it to become North Africa's first international cricket venue.


title: Tangier

text: Museum of the American Legation, whose building was granted to the United States in 1821 by the Sultan Moulay Suliman served as a consulate of the United States and a later legation, as well as a high traffic post for the intelligence agents of the Second World War and a Peace Corps training facility. Today, its courtyards and narrow corridors serve as an elaborate museum that demonstrates relations between the United States and Morocco and the Moroccan heritage, including a wing dedicated to Paul Bowles, where you can see the documents and photographs of the writer donated to the museum by the gallerist and friend of the writer Gloria Kirby in 2010.


title: Tangier

text: Fondation Lorin (Musée de la Fondation Lorin), Rue Abdallah Ben Hachimi 44. An art museum, or maybe rather an archive related to the history of Tangier opened in 1930 in a former synagogue. In addition to art, there are newspapers, photographs and posters on display.


title: Tangier

text: Tangier has been reputed as a safe house for international spying activities. Its position during the Cold War and during other spying periods of the 19th and 20th centuries is legendary.


title: Tangier

text: Tangier acquired the reputation of a spying and smuggling centre and attracted foreign capital due to political neutrality and commercial liberty at that time. It was via a British bank in Tangier that the Bank of England in 1943 for the first time obtained samples of the high-quality forged British currency produced by the Nazis in "Operation Bernhard".


title: Tangier

text: The city has also been a subject for many spy fiction books and films (see Tangier in popular culture).


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world conditions and the presence of contradictions within things, in relation to but not limited to class, labor, and socioeconomic interactions. This is in contrast to the idealist Hegelian dialectic, which emphasizes the observation that contradictions in material phenomena could be resolved by analyzing them and synthesizing a solution whilst retaining their essence. Marx supposed that the most effective solution to the problems caused by said contradictory phenomena was to address and rearrange the systems of social organization at the root of the problems.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Dialectical materialism accepts the evolution of the natural world and the emergence of new qualities of being at new stages of evolution. As Z. A. Jordan noted, "Engels made constant use of the metaphysical insight that the higher level of existence emerges from and has its roots in the lower; that the higher level constitutes a new order of being with its irreducible laws; and that this process of evolutionary advance is governed by laws of development which reflect basic properties of 'matter in motion as a whole'."


title: Dialectical materialism

text: The formulation of the Soviet version of dialectical and historical materialism in the 1930s by Joseph Stalin (such as in Stalin's book "Dialectical and Historical Materialism") became the official interpretation taught in Soviet education, while other interpretations and conceptions of dialectical materialism, such as Mao's "On Contradiction", exist across the world.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Marx and Engels never used the words "dialectical materialism" in their own writings. The term was coined in 1887 by Joseph Dietzgen, a socialist who corresponded with Marx, during and after the failed 1848 German Revolution. Casual mention of the term "dialectical materialism" is also found in the biography "Frederick Engels", by philosopher Karl Kautsky, written in 1899. Marx himself had talked about the "materialist conception of history", which was later referred to as "historical materialism" by Engels. Engels further explained the "materialist dialectic" in his "Dialectics of Nature" in 1883. Georgi Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism, first used the term "dialectical materialism" in 1891 in his writings on Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Marx. Stalin further delineated and defined dialectical and historical materialism as the world outlook of Marxism–Leninism, and as a method to study society and its history.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Marx and Engels each began their adulthood as Young Hegelians, one of several groups of intellectuals inspired by the philosopher Hegel. Marx's doctoral thesis, "The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature", was concerned with the atomism of Epicurus and Democritus, which is considered the foundation of materialist philosophy. Marx was also familiar with Lucretius's theory of "clinamen".


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Marx and Engels both concluded that Hegelian philosophy, at least as interpreted by their former colleagues, was too abstract and was being misapplied in attempts to explain the social injustice in recently industrializing countries such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, which was a growing concern in the early 1840s, as exemplified by Dickensian inequity.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: In contrast to the conventional Hegelian dialectic of the day, which emphasized the idealist observation that human experience is dependent on the mind's perceptions, Marx developed Marxist dialectics, which emphasized the materialist view that the world of the concrete shapes socioeconomic interactions and that those in turn determine sociopolitical reality.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Whereas some Hegelians blamed religious alienation (estrangement from the traditional comforts of religion) for societal ills, Marx and Engels concluded that alienation from economic and political autonomy, coupled with exploitation and poverty, was the real culprit.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: In keeping with dialectical ideas, Marx and Engels thus created an alternative theory, not only of why the world is the way it is but also of which actions people should take to make it the way it ought to be. In "Theses on Feuerbach" (1845), Marx wrote, "The philosophers have only "interpreted" the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to "change" it." Dialectical materialism is thus closely related to Marx's and Engels's historical materialism (and has sometimes been viewed as synonymous with it). Marx rejected Fichte's language of "thesis, antithesis, synthesis".


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Dialectical materialism is an aspect of the broader subject of materialism, which asserts the primacy of the material world: in short, matter precedes thought. Materialism is a realist philosophy of science, which holds that the world is material; that all phenomena in the universe consist of "matter in motion," wherein all things are interdependent and interconnected and develop according to natural law; that the world exists outside us and independently of our perception of it; that thought is a reflection of the material world in the brain, and that the world is "in principle" knowable.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Marx criticized classical materialism as another idealist philosophy—idealist because of its transhistorical understanding of material contexts. The Young Hegelian Ludwig Feuerbach had rejected Hegel's idealistic philosophy and advocated materialism. Despite being strongly influenced by Feuerbach, Marx rejected Feuerbach's version of materialism (anthropological materialism) as inconsistent. The writings of Engels, especially "Anti-Dühring" (1878) and "Dialectics of Nature" (1875–82), were the source of the main doctrines of dialectical materialism.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: The concept of dialectical materialism emerges from statements by Marx in the second edition postface to his "magnum opus", "Das Kapital". There Marx says he intends to use Hegelian dialectics but in revised form. He defends Hegel against those who view him as a "dead dog" and then says, "I openly avowed myself as the pupil of that mighty thinker Hegel". Marx credits Hegel with "being the first to present [dialectic's] form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner". But he then criticizes Hegel for turning dialectics upside down: "With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell.".


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Marx's criticism of Hegel asserts that Hegel's dialectics go astray by dealing with ideas, with the human mind. Hegel's dialectic, Marx says, inappropriately concerns "the process of the human brain"; it focuses on ideas. Hegel's thought is in fact sometimes called dialectical idealism, and Hegel himself is counted among a number of other philosophers known as the German idealists. Marx, on the contrary, believed that dialectics should deal not with the mental world of ideas but with "the material world", the world of production and other economic activity. For Marx, a contradiction can be solved by a desperate struggle to change the social world. This was a very important transformation because it allowed him to move dialectics out of the contextual subject of philosophy and into the study of social relations based on the material world.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: For Marx, human history cannot be fitted into any neat "a priori" schema. He explicitly rejects the idea of Hegel's followers that history can be understood as "a person apart, a metaphysical subject of which real human individuals are but the bearers". To interpret history as though previous social formations have somehow been aiming themselves toward the present state of affairs is "to misunderstand the historical movement by which the successive generations transformed the results acquired by the generations that preceded them". Marx's rejection of this sort of teleology was one reason for his enthusiastic (though not entirely uncritical) reception of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: For Marx, dialectics is not a formula for generating predetermined outcomes but is a method for the empirical study of social processes in terms of interrelations, development, and transformation. In his introduction to the Penguin edition of Marx's "Capital", Ernest Mandel writes, "When the dialectical method is applied to the study of economic problems, economic phenomena are not viewed separately from each other, by bits and pieces, but in their inner connection as an integrated totality, structured around, and by, a basic predominant mode of production."


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Marx's own writings are almost exclusively concerned with understanding human history in terms of systemic processes, based on modes of production (broadly speaking, the ways in which societies are organized to employ their technological powers to interact with their material surroundings). This is called "historical materialism". More narrowly, within the framework of this general theory of history, most of Marx's writing is devoted to an analysis of the specific structure and development of the capitalist economy.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: For his part, Engels applies a "dialectical" approach to the natural world in general, arguing that contemporary science is increasingly recognizing the necessity of viewing natural processes in terms of interconnectedness, development, and transformation. Some scholars have doubted that Engels' "dialectics of nature" is a legitimate extension of Marx's approach to social processes. Other scholars have argued that despite Marx's insistence that humans are natural beings in an evolving, mutual relationship with the rest of nature, Marx's own writings pay inadequate attention to the ways in which human agency is constrained by such factors as biology, geography, and ecology.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Engels postulated three laws of dialectics from his reading of Hegel's "Science of Logic". Engels elucidated these laws as the materialist dialectic in his work "Dialectics of Nature":


title: Dialectical materialism

text: The first law, which originates with the ancient Ionian philosopher Heraclitus, can be clarified through the following examples:


title: Dialectical materialism

text: The first law was seen by both Hegel and Vladimir Lenin as the central feature of a dialectical understanding of things:


title: Dialectical materialism

text: The second law Hegel took from Ancient Greek philosophers, notably the paradox of the heap, and explanation by Aristotle, and it is equated with what scientists call phase transitions. It may be traced to the ancient Ionian philosophers, particularly Anaximenes from whom Aristotle, Hegel, and Engels inherited the concept. For all these authors, one of the main illustrations is the phase transitions of water. There has also been an effort to apply this mechanism to social phenomena, whereby population increases result in changes in social structure. The law of the passage of quantitative changes into qualitative changes can also be applied to the process of social change and class conflict.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: The third law, "negation of the negation", originated with Hegel. Although Hegel coined the term "negation of the negation", it gained its fame from Marx's using it in "Capital". There Marx wrote this: "The [death] knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated. The capitalist mode of appropriation, the result of the capitalist mode of production, produces capitalist private property. This is the first negation of individual private property ... But capitalist production begets, with the inexorability of a law of Nature, its own negation. It [this new negation] is the negation of negation."


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Z. A. Jordan notes, "Engels made constant use of the metaphysical insight that the higher level of existence emerges from and has its roots in the lower; that the higher level constitutes a new order of being with its irreducible laws; and that this process of evolutionary advance is governed by laws of development which reflect basic properties of 'matter in motion as a whole'."


title: Dialectical materialism

text: After reading Hegel's "Science of Logic" in 1914, Lenin made some brief notes outlining three "elements" of logic. They are:


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Lenin develops these in a further series of notes, and appears to argue that "the transition of quantity into quality and vice versa" is an example of the unity and opposition of opposites expressed tentatively as "not only the unity of opposites but the transitions of every determination, quality, feature, side, property into every other [into its opposite?]."


title: Dialectical materialism

text: In his essay "On the Question of Dialectics", Lenin stated, "Development is the 'struggle' of opposites."


title: Dialectical materialism

text: He stated, "The unity (coincidence, identity, equal action) of opposites is conditional, temporary, transitory, relative. The struggle of mutually exclusive opposites is absolute, just as development and motion are absolute."


title: Dialectical materialism

text: In "Materialism and Empiriocriticism" (1908), Lenin explained "dialectical materialism" as three axes: (i) the materialist inversion of Hegelian dialectics, (ii) the historicity of ethical principles ordered to class struggle, and (iii) the convergence of "laws of evolution" in physics (Helmholtz), biology (Darwin), and in political economy (Marx). Hence, Lenin was philosophically positioned between historicist Marxism (Labriola) and determinist Marxism—a political position close to "social Darwinism" (Kautsky). Moreover, late-century discoveries in physics (x-rays, electrons), and the beginning of quantum mechanics, philosophically challenged previous conceptions of matter and materialism, thus matter seemed to be disappearing. Lenin disagreed:


title: Dialectical materialism

text: 'Matter disappears' means that the limit within which we have hitherto known matter disappears, and that our knowledge is penetrating deeper; properties of matter are disappearing that formerly seemed absolute, immutable, and primary, and which are now revealed to be relative and characteristic only of certain states of matter. For the "sole" 'property' of matter, with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up, is the property of "being an objective reality", of existing outside of the mind.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Lenin was developing the work of Engels, who said that "with each epoch-making discovery, even in the sphere of natural science, materialism has to change its form". One of Lenin's challenges was distancing materialism, as a viable philosophical outlook, from the "vulgar materialism" expressed in the statement "the brain secretes thought in the same way as the liver secretes bile" (attributed to 18th-century physician Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis); "metaphysical materialism" (matter composed of immutable particles); and 19th-century "mechanical materialism" (matter as random molecules interacting per the laws of mechanics). The philosophic solution that Lenin (and Engels) proposed was "dialectical materialism", wherein matter is defined as "objective reality", theoretically consistent with (new) developments occurring in the sciences.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Lenin reassessed Feuerbach's philosophy and concluded that it was in line with dialectical materialism.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: György Lukács, Minister of Culture in the brief Béla Kun government of the Hungarian Soviet Republic (1919), published "History and Class Consciousness" (1923), in which he defined "dialectical materialism" as the knowledge of society as a whole, knowledge which, in itself, was the class consciousness of the proletariat. In the first chapter "What is Orthodox Marxism?", Lukács defined "orthodoxy" as fidelity to the "Marxist method", not fidelity to "dogmas":


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Orthodox Marxism, therefore, does not imply the uncritical acceptance of the results of Marx's investigations. It is not the "belief" in this or that thesis, nor the exegesis of a "sacred" book. On the contrary, orthodoxy refers exclusively to method. It is the scientific conviction that dialectical materialism is the road to truth and that its methods can be developed, expanded, and deepened, only along the lines laid down by its founders. (§1)


title: Dialectical materialism

text: In his later works and actions, Lukács became a leader of Democratic Marxism. He modified many of his formulations of his 1923 works and went on to develop a Marxist ontology and played an active role in democratic movements in Hungary in 1956 and the 1960s. He and his associates became sharply critical of the formulation of dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union that was exported to those countries under its control. In the 1960s, his associates became known as the Budapest School.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Lukács, in his philosophical criticism of Marxist revisionism, proposed an intellectual return to the Marxist method. So did Louis Althusser, who later defined Marxism and psychoanalysis as "conflictual sciences", stating that political factions and revisionism are inherent to Marxist theory and political praxis, because dialectical materialism is the philosophic product of class struggle:


title: Dialectical materialism

text: For this reason, the task of orthodox Marxism, its victory over Revisionism and utopianism can never mean the defeat, once and for all, of false tendencies. It is an ever-renewed struggle against the insidious effects of bourgeois ideology on the thought of the proletariat. Marxist orthodoxy is no guardian of traditions, it is the eternally vigilant prophet proclaiming the relation between the tasks of the immediate present and the totality of the historical process. (§5)


title: Dialectical materialism

text: ...the premise of dialectical materialism is, we recall: 'It is not men's consciousness that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence that determines their consciousness'... Only when the core of existence stands revealed as a social process can existence be seen as the product, albeit the hitherto unconscious product, of human activity. (§5)


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Philosophically aligned with Marx is the criticism of the individualist, bourgeois philosophy of the subject, which is founded upon the voluntary and conscious subject. Against said ideology is the primacy of social relations. Existence—and thus the world—is the product of human activity, but this can be seen only by accepting the primacy of social process on individual consciousness. This type of consciousness is an effect of ideological mystification.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: At the 5th Congress of the Communist International (July 1924), Grigory Zinoviev formally denounced Lukács's heterodox definition of Orthodox Marxism as exclusively derived from fidelity to the "Marxist method", and not to Communist party dogmas; and denounced the philosophical developments of the German Marxist theorist Karl Korsch.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: In the 1930s, Stalin and his associates formulated a version of dialectical and historical materialism that became the "official" Soviet interpretation of Marxism. It was codified in Stalin's work, "Dialectical and Historical Materialism" (1938), and popularized in textbooks used for compulsory education within the Soviet Union and throughout the Eastern Bloc.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: In "On Contradiction" (1937), Mao Zedong outlined a version of dialectical materialism that subsumed two of Engels's three principal laws of dialectics, "the transformation of quantity into quality" and "the negation of the negation" as sub-laws (and not principal laws of their own) of the first law, "the unity and interpenetration of opposites".


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Historian of science Loren Graham has detailed at length the role played by dialectical materialism in the Soviet Union in disciplines throughout the natural and social sciences. He has concluded that, despite the Lysenko period in genetics and constraints on free inquiry imposed by political authorities, dialectical materialism had a positive influence on the work of many Soviet scientists.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Some evolutionary biologists, such as Richard Lewontin and Stephen Jay Gould, have tried to employ dialectical materialism in their approach. They view dialectics as playing a precautionary heuristic role in their work. From Lewontin's perspective, we get this idea:


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Dialectical materialism is not, and never has been, a programmatic method for solving particular physical problems. Rather, a dialectical analysis provides an overview and a set of warning signs against particular forms of dogmatism and narrowness of thought. It tells us, "Remember that history may leave an important trace. Remember that being and becoming are dual aspects of nature. Remember that conditions change and that the conditions necessary to the initiation of some process may be destroyed by the process itself. Remember to pay attention to real objects in time and space and not lose them in utterly idealized abstractions. Remember that the qualitative effects of context and interaction may be lost when phenomena are isolated". And above all else, "Remember that all the other caveats are only reminders and warning signs whose application to different circumstances of the real world is contingent."


title: Dialectical materialism

text: ... dialectical thinking should be taken more seriously by Western scholars, not discarded because some nations of the second world have constructed a cardboard version as an official political doctrine.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: ... when presented as guidelines for a philosophy of change, not as dogmatic precepts true by fiat, the three classical laws of dialectics embody a holistic vision that views change as interaction among components of complete systems and sees the components themselves not as a priori entities, but as both products and inputs to the system. Thus, the law of "interpenetrating opposites" records the inextricable interdependence of components: the "transformation of quantity to quality" defends a systems-based view of change that translates incremental inputs into alterations of state, and the "negation of negation" describes the direction given to history because complex systems cannot revert exactly to previous states.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: This heuristic was also applied to the theory of punctuated equilibrium proposed by Gould and Niles Eldredge. They wrote that "history, as Hegel said, moves upward in a spiral of negations", and that "punctuated equilibria is a model for discontinuous tempos of change (in) the process of speciation and the deployment of species in geological time." They noted that "the law of transformation of quantity into quality... holds that a new quality emerges in a leap as the slow accumulation of quantitative changes, long resisted by a stable system, finally forces it rapidly from one state into another", a phenomenon described in some disciplines as a paradigm shift. Apart from the commonly cited example of water turning to steam with increased temperature, Gould and Eldredge noted another analogy in information theory, "with its jargon of equilibrium, steady state, and homeostasis maintained by negative feedback", and "extremely rapid transitions that occur with positive feedback".


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Lewontin, Gould, and Eldredge were thus more interested in dialectical materialism as a heuristic than a dogmatic form of 'truth' or a statement of their politics. Nevertheless, they found a readiness for critics to "seize upon" key statements and portray punctuated equilibrium, and exercises associated with it, such as public exhibitions, as a "Marxist plot".


title: Dialectical materialism

text: The Communist Party's official interpretation of Marxism, dialectical materialism, fit Alexander Oparin's studies on the origins of life as 'a flow, an exchange, a dialectical unity'. This notion was re-enforced by Oparin's association with Lysenko.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: In 1972, the worst chaos of China's Cultural Revolution was over and scientific research resumed. Astrophysicist and cosmologist Fang Lizhi found an opportunity to read some recent astrophysics papers in western journals, and soon wrote his first paper on cosmology, "A Cosmological Solution in Scalar-tensor Theory with Mass and Blackbody Radiation", which was published on the journal "Wu Li" (Physics), Vol. 1, 163 (1972). This was the first modern cosmological research paper in mainland China. Fang assembled a group of young faculty members of USTC around him to conduct astrophysics research.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: At the time, conducting research on relativity theory and cosmology in China was very risky politically, because these theories were considered to be "idealistic" theories in contradiction with the dialectical materialism theory, which is the official philosophy of the Communist Party. According to the dialectical materialism philosophy, both time and space must be infinite, while the Big Bang theory allows the possibility of the finiteness of space and time. During the Cultural Revolution, campaigns were waged against Albert Einstein and the Theory of Relativity in Beijing and Shanghai. Once Fang published his theory, some of the critics of the Theory of Relativity, especially a group based in Shanghai, prepared to attack Fang politically. However, by this time the "leftist" line was declining in the Chinese academia. Professor Dai Wensai, the most well-known Chinese astronomer at the time and chair of the Astronomy Department of Nanjing University, also supported Fang. Many of the members of the "Theory of Relativity Criticism Group" changed to study the theory and conduct research in it. Subsequently, Fang was regarded as the father of cosmological research in China.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Joseph Needham, an influential historian of science and a Christian who nonetheless was an adherent of dialectical materialism, suggested that a more appropriate term might be "dialectical organicism". Philosopher Allen Wood argued that, in its form as an official Soviet philosophy, dialectical materialism was doomed to be superficial because "creativity or critical thinking" was impossible in an authoritarian environment. Nevertheless, he considered the basic aims and principles of dialectical materialism to be in harmony with rational scientific thought.


title: Dialectical materialism

text: Economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises wrote a critique of Marxist materialism which he published as a part of his 1957 work "Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution". H. B. Acton described the creed as "a philosophical farrago". Max Eastman argued that dialectical materialism lacks a psychological basis.


title: Late Registration

text: Late Registration is the second studio album by American rapper and producer Kanye West. It was released on August 30, 2005, through Def Jam Recordings and Roc-A-Fella Records. West recorded the album over the course of a year during sessions held at studios in Hollywood and New York City, in collaboration with Jon Brion. The recording sessions also featured guest contributions from Adam Levine, Jamie Foxx, Common, Brandy, Jay-Z, and Nas, among others.


title: Late Registration

text: West's production for "Late Registration" departed from the sped-up soul samples of his debut studio album, "The College Dropout" (2004), moving towards a more elaborate and orchestral style with a 20-piece ensemble. Drawing creative inspiration from alternative acts such as Fiona Apple and Portishead, he experimented with musical shifts, string arrangements, and a variety of instruments not usually associated with hip hop, including a celesta, harpsichord, and Chinese bells. In an effort to write authentic yet relatable lyrics, West engages in storytelling while showcasing his Christian heritage that informed his relationship to the capitalist market economy. He critiques multiple issues, such as institutional racism, higher education, health care, and the blood diamond trade.


title: Late Registration

text: A widespread critical success, "Late Registration" has often been viewed as a progression from "The College Dropout" and a pivotal release in hip hop. Numerous reviewers praised the former's elegant and ambitious musical direction, while some highlighted West's songwriting and performances for their balance of pop and conscious hip hop sensibilities. It was named to year-end lists for 2005 by multiple publications, such as "Rolling Stone", "Time", and "USA Today". The album led to West receiving eight nominations at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards, including Album of the Year and Best Rap Album, winning the latter.


title: Late Registration

text: Matching "The College Dropout"s commercial success, "Late Registration" debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 and sold 860,000 copies in the first week, while reaching the top 10 in nine other countries, including the United Kingdom and Ireland. It eventually sold more than 3,000,000 copies in the US and received a five-times platinum certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as well as sales certifications in several other territories. Five accompanying singles were released, including the hits "Touch the Sky", "Heard 'Em Say", and "Gold Digger", the latter of which topped the "Billboard" Hot 100. Music videos for all five singles were produced, while West also promoted the album with the Touch the Sky Tour (2005–06) and his debut live album, "Late Orchestration" (2006). Since then, "Late Registration" has frequently appeared on top albums lists, including "Rolling Stone"s "500 Greatest Albums of All Time", on which it ranked 117th in 2020.


title: Late Registration

text: "Late Registration" is the second of Kanye West's planned four education-themed studio albums, following the major success of his 2004 debut "The College Dropout". The album showcased his signature production style of using sped-up vocal samples from soul records, known as "chipmunk soul". However, because of its success, other hip hop artists widely imitated this sampling style. In response to this, and fearing his own dependence on the technique, West decided to find a new sound and progress in both songwriting and stylistic range. West enlisted film score composer and record producer Jon Brion for "Late Registration", resulting in Brion serving as co-executive producer for several tracks. The rapper heard and liked Brion's score while watching the 2004 film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind", and also listened to songs he had produced for singer-songwriter Fiona Apple's second album "When the Pawn..." (1999). Apple was another one of West's favorite acts and sources of musical inspiration for "Late Registration", whose direction West described as "that Coldplay, Portishead, Fiona Apple style". Portishead's 1994 album "Dummy" was another reference point for West's direction with the album.


title: Late Registration

text: Brion was inexperienced in creating hip hop records when initially collaborating with West, yet the two were able to productively work together after only one afternoon in the studio when they discovered that neither confined his musical knowledge and vision to any specific genre. Discussing "Late Registration" differing in direction from standard hip hop, Brion said, "There are colors and ideas that make [the album] different from average hip-hop, but Kanye is already different from the average hip-hop guy. He's got this sense of pop record-making which is really solid, and he likes tracks with a lot of things going on in them – which is not necessarily common for hip-hop. He was already barking up that tree."


title: Late Registration

text: West spent two million USD to produce "Late Registration", recording it in slightly over a year. The majority of the recording sessions for the album took place at Sony Music Studios in New York City and the Record Plant in Hollywood, California; further sessions were held at other Hollywood locations Chalice Recording Studios and Grandmaster Recording Studios. In June 2004, the rapper made plans to begin recording material after finishing his support of R&B singer Usher's Truth Tour. By November, West had completed around 75 percent of the album. However, he felt unsatisfied with the outcome and this led to Brion becoming involved in March 2005, which drastically altered the project's direction.


title: Late Registration

text: The album's recording sessions between West and Brion were largely exploratory, as the pair experimented with a broad spectrum of sounds. West would construct a song's basic structure, bringing in a sample, drum beat programming, and occasionally unfinished rap verses. After thinking through what musical direction to take, he would then select from a variety of unique instruments that Brion both provided and played, including drums and strings. With the instruments, West attempted to incorporate a distinctive sound into the song's texture. West envisioned the recording as the creation of a film: visualizing the songs as scenes, outlining each in such a way that they efficiently conveyed their respective social or introspective context, and ensuring all were synchronized within the fabric of the complete set. This sentiment was shared by Brion who said, "He thinks in frequency ranges. I can recognize when someone sees music architecturally, which is how I work. I see it as a spatial thing: left to right, front to back, up and down. It's animated and it's moving in real time. Kanye has that. He tries things out until it fits, until it sits where it is supposed to sit and everything has the correct emotional function."


title: Late Registration

text: For "Late Registration", West also collaborated with guest artists, whom he selected based on the effect each of their voices had on him upon hearing them. He cited the serene vocals of pop rock band Maroon 5's lead vocalist Adam Levine, the trademark voice of Brandy, the rap skill of his frequent collaborator Jay-Z, and the lyricism of fellow rapper Paul Wall as primary examples. Levine is featured on the album's opening track, "Heard 'Em Say". The two had previously collaborated on a remix for "This Love" (2004) that Maroon 5 commissioned West to work on and later became good friends when sitting together on a flight to Rome for the 2004 MTV Europe Music Awards. While playing songs from his second album via his iPod for him on the flight, West presented the demo for "Heard 'Em Say", to which Levine added a hook he had recently written and thought was an ideal fit. The song was recorded quickly because the singer only had a couple of hours free for studio time, and Brion was able to effectively work with the composition and Levine's vocal track in a few hours.


title: Late Registration

text: West originally produced and recorded "Gold Digger" at Ludacris's home in Atlanta, Georgia, for fellow rapper Shawnna's 2004 debut album "Worth tha Weight". He had written the chorus from a female first-person viewpoint, though Shawnna ultimately passed the song on to him. West then rewrote the two verses from his own point of view and shortly before the release of "Gold Digger" in 2005, he penned a third verse; the final recording and mastering was done at Sony Music Studios in a week. After he saw singer Jamie Foxx's portrayal of singer-songwriter Ray Charles when watching the 2004 film "Ray" with his friend John Mayer, West decided to have him sing an interpolation of Charles' song "I Got a Woman". Once the track was in place, it was layered with additional instruments that Brion contributed.


title: Late Registration

text: Wall appears alongside West and his GOOD Music labelmate GLC on "Drive Slow". It was recorded in Los Angeles after the two had formed a friendship while posing for a photo shoot for an August 2005 issue of "King", in a spread titled "Coming Kings". West had originally wanted British-Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. to appear on the track, but she opted out of the appearance due to a busy schedule. "My Way Home" is performed solely by West's GOOD Music associate and fellow rapper Common, whose sixth studio album "Be" was being produced and recorded by West alongside "Late Registration". Certain tracks originally produced by West for the former turned into beats for his own work. 107 tracks were recorded during a Pro Tools session for "Bring Me Down"—48 of which were solely sang by Brandy— and the editing process for the tracks lasted one day.


title: Late Registration

text: West first crafted "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" as a song about his friendship with his crew, until he learned of the civil war in Sierra Leone financed by conflict diamonds and re-recorded it. While the original version of the song featured West as the sole performer, he decided to record a remix with a guest verse provided by Jay-Z. Both the original and remix versions of "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" appear on the album, with the former included as a bonus track. The original contains live drums played by Michel Gondry, the director of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and later the first music video for "Heard 'Em Say"; he had visited the studio one day when a drum kit was set up by Brion. According to Jay-Z, West mixed "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" about 14 times before he felt comfortable with premiering it. The recording was further delayed when West and Brion were required to wait two weeks to rent the harpsichord that they used for the percussion. West recorded a verse by fellow rapper Nas for the track "We Major", even though the rapper was engaged in a feud with Jay-Z at the time. Despite this, West revealed that the song is regarded by Jay-Z as his favorite on "Late Registration". "Hey Mama" was first recorded by West as early as 2000.


title: Late Registration

text: Brion experienced difficulty conducting a 20-piece orchestra for "Celebration", as its musicians were distracted when giggling at West's humorous lyrics. West and Brion had some minor discord for "Roses"; Brion initially layered it with keyboard arrangements, only for West to remove his keys along with the beat and completely reconfigure the entire song so that the verses are built around the rhythm of his vocals, while Brion's arrangements arrive during the choruses. Brion later lightheartedly compared the indecision surrounding the construction of the track to that of Prince's well-known last-minute removal of the bassline from "When Doves Cry" (1984). Singer Patti LaBelle recalled having contributed vocals to "Roses": "I was in [West's] studio one night, and he and his mother both asked if I'd just sing something on this song." The singer further stated that she was not credited because the album's liner notes "had already been printed up".


title: Late Registration

text: The music of "Late Registration" blends West's primary hip hop production with Brion's elaborate orchestration and experimentally delves into a wide variety of genres, including pop, R&B, soul, and G-funk. With the presence of Brion, who conducted a 20-piece orchestra and played instruments chosen by West, the album is largely orchestral in nature, featuring string arrangements, drums, gospel choirs, a 360 digital keyboard, guitars, pianos, and brass, among other symphonic instrumentation. Brion further incorporated authentic instruments, such as a celesta, Chamberlin, harpsichord, Chinese bells, and berimbau.


title: Late Registration

text: In a piece about "Late Registration", Serena Kim of "Vibe" magazine noted how West uses unconventional styles and sudden musical shifts in song structures, drawing comparisons to the Beatles' experimental era. Kim observed a heavy difference between the album and West's previous work, stating, "West ambitiously attempts to depart from the street sensibilities of "Dropout" by giving "Late Registration" a shiny, quasi-alt-pop finish." "Rolling Stone" writer Rob Sheffield concurred with this sentiment, analyzing that West "claims the whole world of music as hip-hop turf", taking on a "mad quest to explode every cliché about hip-hop identity". The album has been described as a work of pop rap by Caleb Wossen of the "Dallas Observer".


title: Late Registration

text: The first full track on "Late Registration", "Heard 'Em Say" exhibits a cascading piano melody provided by excerpts of "Someone That I Used To Love", as performed by Natalie Cole, embellished over tumbling beats, a bass synthesizer, and brief plucks of acoustic guitar. The song's intricately composed outro features the last vocals fading out as various bells and whistles are incorporated, succeeded by the bass synthesizer. "Touch the Sky" stands as the sole song on the album not to feature production by West. The song was produced by fellow Roc-A-Fella producer Just Blaze, who uses a slowed-down sample of Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" (1970), filled with Latin horns. "Gold Digger" contains an interpolation of "I Got a Woman" by Charles and a bouncy beat that relies on handclaps, accompanied by scratches from West's touring DJ A-Trak. Towards the end, the song employs vintage synthesizers, which are joined by a honking keyboard. West's production approach is simplified for "Drive Slow", a song that contains a looped sample of the alto sax from Hank Crawford's recording of the 1973 track "Wildflower" by Skylark, before slowing down the sample towards the end, which is antithetical to West's "chipmunk soul"-styled loops.


title: Late Registration

text: The interlude "My Way Home" contains a sample of "Home Is Where The Hatred Is" (1971) by Gil Scott-Heron. "Bring Me Down" has more orchestration than any other track on "Late Registration", including string arrangements, violins, and cello. The structure of "Addiction" contains synths, congas, strings, and elements of Etta James's "My Funny Valentine" (1937). All the while, West's vocals go through heavy overdubbing. "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" is built around a sample of Shirley Bassey's theme song for the 1971 James Bond film "Diamonds Are Forever", layering it with lush instrumental arrangements that feature drums, horns, strings, and a harpsichord.


title: Late Registration

text: "Late Registration"s longest track, the seven-minute-long "We Major", implements exuberant, amplified backing vocals and a "splashy disco groove" featuring a bassline, electric piano glissandos, and horns. The melody of "Hey Mama" is laced with a looped "La-la-la" vocal sample from the 1972 track "Today Won't Come Again" by Donal Leace, while its beat contains Tin Pan Alley-styled drums. Additionally, the song features vocoder-processed background vocals, an xylophone solo, and a cascading synth outro. "Celebration" is a cinematic-styled song that includes contributions from a 20-piece orchestra and contains a sample of the KayGees's "Heavenly Dream" (1979). A columnist for "The Guardian" described the song as evoking "the lavish 1970s psychedelic soul of Rotary Connection".


title: Late Registration

text: Some of the most elaborate orchestral arrangement expressed on the album is contained within its final official track "Gone". The composition begins with a vocal sample of "It's Too Late" (1965) by Otis Redding that develops into a two-chord piano ostinato, followed by a simplistic funk beat. As the song progresses, its structure gradually morphs and experiences growing musicality. The composition later adds a string arrangement from ten violinists, four violists, and four cellists, which initially comes in brief staccato bursts and acts as a counterpoint to the rise and fall of West's voice. After its third verse, the song enters an instrumental passage.


title: Late Registration

text: According to "Time" magazine's Josh Tyrangiel, "Late Registration" acts as a demonstration of West's deliberate storytelling mode. West stated that his goal for the album was to touch on topics that people from all walks of life could find relatable, while remaining true to himself, intending his rapping to be "just as ill as Jadakiss and just as understandable as Will Smith". University of North Carolina scholar Kevin Pyon sees "Late Registration" as a continuation from "The College Dropout" in demonstrating how West's Christian heritage has informed his relationship to the capitalist market economy. In his analysis, the album reaffirms West's "paradoxical articulation of market and religion—that is, his simultaneous sacred critique and secular valorization of capitalism". The scholar elaborated that West being an authentic Christian "does not replace or merge with his market authenticity as a materialistic rapper but co-exists with it in uneasy tension". West later told Berlin-based artist Tino Sehgal in 2021 that being "under capitalist rule" is "killing us" and declared, "It's time to change that." Robert Christgau summed up West's lyrical persona to be "mammon in practice, Christ in spirit".


title: Late Registration

text: "Heard 'Em Say" is told from the perspective of an afflicted, impoverished American quietly lamenting the fallacies of society and questioning the ways of the world around him. According to rap scholar and author Mickey Hess, West's lyrics contemplate "being honest with yourself in a world that is not". On "Touch the Sky", West expresses wonder about his good fortune, while also admitting that his mistakes helped him with songwriting despite trying to put them right. West speaks about women that drain men of the money in their pockets on "Gold Digger", accompanied by Jamie Foxx's ad libbing. However, another story arises within the third verse, which illustrates a formerly destitute black male who abandons a non-gold digger for a white woman. "Drive Slow" acknowledges car culture and features West reflecting on when he was young, poor, and ambitious. In West's description, "Crack Music" delves into "how crack was placed in the black community". West delivers poetry on "Roses", which sees him criticizing the quality of American health care.


title: Late Registration

text: The remix of "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" references the deaths of many civilians in diamond mines, as well as reiterating the tension between criticizing consumerism and failing to resist it. Jay-Z appears towards the end of the remix, focusing on his ongoing feud with Dame Dash. The original version is included as a bonus track, featuring West linking Sierra Leone's civil war to the jewellery trade. The extended raps on "We Major" are a spiritual exultation of generational and personal success, followed by Kanye's dedication to his mother Donda West on "Hey Mama". In the latter song, Kanye West recounts his mother being supportive of him even though he was doing the opposite of what she desired. West looks at the idea of abandoning fame on "Gone", thinking about a simpler life.


title: Late Registration

text: Similarly to "The College Dropout", a series of skits are voiced by comedian DeRay Davis throughout "Late Registration". They involve a fictional black fraternity called "Broke Phi Broke", which West's character joins. The members pride themselves in living a life without money or worldly possessions, despite the clear disadvantages such a lifestyle brings. West's character is eventually expelled from the fraternity after the leader discovers that not only has he been making beats for cash on the side, but has also broken some of its rules, such as eating meals everyday, buying new clothes, and taking showers. According to Hess, the skits serve to encapsulate "a contradiction at the core of contemporary American life: the need to belong, to fit in, with your fellow humans versus the Darwinistic mad grab at material things, success in the latter being the very definition of success in our culture". The album's critique of higher education, including historically black colleges and universities, as a useless institution for African Americans is considered by some scholars to be a variation of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's theories connecting education to social and cultural reproduction. According to academic journalist Chris Richardson, West advances "a theme critical of institutional education and the broader social distinctions it produces" that is specifically connected to Bourdieu's concept of symbolic violence, which is "defined as the ability to impose meanings while concealing their underlying power relations".


title: Late Registration

text: The fraternity theme is revisited towards the end of the album on the UK edition bonus track "We Can Make It Better", featuring guest raps from Talib Kweli, Q-Tip, Common, and Rhymefest over a sped-up sample of "Make It Easy on Yourself", as covered by the Three Degrees. In his lyrics, West addresses a girl as a tour guide through her first day on a college campus while trying to alleviate her fears of dating black men in the aftermath of an abusive relationship. The guest rappers offer observations on urban threats such as exploitative criminals, drug addicts, and dangerous police officers, concluding with Rhymefest's blame of government tactics in terrorizing African Americans. On the Japanese and Australian Tour editions bonus track "Back to Basics", West explores the materialist-conscious rapper contrast.


title: Late Registration

text: "Late Registration" was originally set to be released on July 12, 2005, but was pushed back to August 16 by West's record labels Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam. The release date was postphoned once more to August 30, 2005, for which over 1,600,000 copies were distributed to stores in preparation because the album was expected to be the best-selling record of the year. On the iTunes Store, it became one of the most pre-ordered titles in history up to September 2005.


title: Late Registration

text: An advertising campaign for "Late Registration" was directed by Maggie Rogers and Paul Tuersley, while commissioned by Rachel Paley. It was produced by Abby Johnson for Mr & Mrs Smith Design. At the 2006 Cads Music Vision Awards, the campaign received a nomination for Best Music TV Commercial. "Late Registration" was released for online streaming via AOL Music on August 30, 2005. That same day, West made an in-store appearance at the Tower Records location in New York's Lincoln Center to autograph copies of the album for fans. In September 2005, Def Jam announced tour dates across North America from October to December of that year for West's Touch the Sky Tour, titled after the song. West was supported by Common, Keyshia Cole, and Fantasia on the tour. Common had cancelled his involvement, until he performed with West for the Touch the Sky Tour's kickoff show at the University of Miami Convocation Center on October 11, 2005. After he finished the tour's first leg, West supported Irish rock band U2 for four dates of their Vertigo Tour at the end of 2005. West later performed five UK dates on the Touch the Sky tour in 2006 and during the last show at the NEC Arena in Solihull, two security guards were shot. The rapper was then supposed to support U2's Australian concerts on their Vertigo Tour in March 2006, but the shows were postponed.


title: Late Registration

text: The art direction and music packaging design for "Late Registration" were both handled by Brooklyn graphic design studio Morning Breath, Inc, while Louis Marino served as creative director. The photography was done by Sarah A. Friedman and Kris Yiengst, the latter of which also did art coordination. Styling and grooming were handled by Charlene Roxborough and Ibn Jasper, respectively, for the company Partos, while Doug Joswick was responsible for package production. Similar to the cover art of "The College Dropout", the artwork features West's "Dropout Bear" mascot, showing it at a child's size and stood in the center of two large wooden doors at Princeton University. The mascot has goggle eyes, perky ears, and a collegian outfit, wearing a blazer with a school insignia. In the album booklet, Dropout Bear appears in the university, sitting alone in classrooms and reads books before exiting. The booklet includes a banner that reads "Tardus Subcriptio", translated as "Late Registration". West's vision for the style of the pictures was inspired by the works of American satirical painter John Currin, one of his favorite artists.


title: Late Registration

text: In a preview of "Late Registration" on April 20, 2005, West appeared on New York radio station Hot 97 and premiered "Diamonds from Sierra Leone". The following month, the song was serviced to US mainstream radio stations as the album's lead single by Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam. It charted at number 43 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, alongside reaching number eight on the UK Singles Chart. "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" has been certified platinum in the US by the RIAA for amassing 1,000,000 certified units, while the BPI has awarded it with a silver certification for sales of 200,000 units. An accompanying music video was debuted on June 15, 2005, in which rough scenes of young children mining for diamonds are juxtaposed with shots of West rapping through the streets of Prague. On July 5, "Gold Digger" was released to US rhythmic contemporary radio stations as the second single from "Late Registration", through West's labels. The song was a smash hit, topping the Hot 100, ARIA Singles Chart, and NZ Singles Chart. It experienced similar success on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at the second position. In September 2020, "Gold Digger" received an octuple platinum certification from the RIAA for pushing 8,000,000 certified units in the US, standing as one of the best-selling singles digitally in the country. The song was later certified triple platinum by the BPI for selling 1,800,000 units in the UK.


title: Late Registration

text: On October 24, 2005, "Heard 'Em Say" was issued on a 12" vinyl as the album's third single by Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam. The song peaked at numbers 26 and 22 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart, respectively. It has been awarded a platinum certification by the RIAA for shelving 1,000,000 certified units in the US. The song's first music video depicts a Christmas world in Macy's flagship New York store, while the second one utilizes animation and shows West taking on the role of a cab driver in an imaginary city. "Touch the Sky" was released on a digital EP in the UK as the fourth single from "Late Registration" on January 1, 2006, through West's labels. The song reached number 42 on the Hot 100, while it debuted at number six on the UK Singles Chart. "Touch the Sky" has been certified platinum by both the RIAA and BPI in the US and UK, respectively, having amassed 1,000,000 certified units in the former country and pushed 600,000 units in the latter. The song's music video was debuted in February 2006 and features West portraying the character "Evel Kanyevel", preparing to travel across the Grand Canyon in homage to Evel Knievel's unsuccessful 1974 jump across the Snake River Canyon. On June 6, "Drive Slow" was released on a 12" vinyl as the album's fifth and final single by Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam. The song was later certified gold by the RIAA for shelving 500,000 certified units in the US. An accompanying music video was filmed, featuring cameos from Wall and fellow rapper T.I.


title: Late Registration

text: "Late Registration" was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 85, based on 31 reviews. Reviewers generally regarded it as far superior to "The College Dropout".


title: Late Registration

text: Writing in "Rolling Stone", Sheffield deemed "Late Registration" "an undeniable triumph" throughout, seeing it as expansive enough to make "the debut sound like a rough draft" and adding that West proves he is a real rapper. "The Guardian" lead critic Alexis Petridis highlighted West's topicality and subversive studio production on the album; he noticed the indication of "an artist effortlessly outstripping his peers: more ideas, better lyrics, bigger hooks, greater depth". Andy Kellman from AllMusic said the rapper "can be tremendous" as a songwriter and noted his production style had gone from unrefined and erratic-tempo samples to "a more traditionally musical touch" contributed by Brion. Sean Fennessey of "Pitchfork" felt West provided a worthy successor to "The College Dropout" with an "expansive, imperfect masterpiece" that draws on his enthusiastic, ambitious, and scattered personality.


title: Late Registration

text: "Late Registration" was hailed by some journalists as a pivotal release in hip hop. "Billboard" senior editor Gail Mitchell said that with its combination of socially conscious hip hop, club, and personal reflections, the album "represents a watershed moment in rap music history", while Kitty Empire from "The Observer" viewed it as an important milestone for the genre, declaring West "the Brian Wilson of hip-hop" and observing that he "plays up the struggle between conscience and covetousness, the pop mainstream", and what is achievable within hip hop's traditional boundaries. Similarly, Steve Yates from the same publication compared West's aspirations in working with Brion to how Stevie Wonder collaborated in his classic 1970s period, adding that by being "creative, intelligent, funny and daring" he is the only act besides rap group Outkast "to walk the tightrope between pop sensibility, conscious rap and the outright nihilism of your common-or-garden [variety] gangsta". In the "Los Angeles Times", Robert Hilburn compared West's dignified execution of pop crossover to that of the Beatles, Johnny Cash, and Bob Marley. Christgau, writing in "The Village Voice", praised the lyrical and musical "exquisite details" of the album, saying that West may be arrogant, "only that's not why he always samples". He concluded that West is as good as he believes himself, calling the rapper "a backpacker at heart who, like many brilliant nerds before him, has accrued precious metal by following his dream".


title: Late Registration

text: Some reviewers were more qualified in their praise. In "The A.V. Club", Nathan Rabin found "Late Registration" as ambitious as "The College Dropout", albeit "less successful" because of melodramatic lyricism and symphony music without a "strong narrative" to hold the songs together; he finalized that the album "plays like a brilliant first draft, flawed and uneven, but radiating humor and heart". "The New York Times" critic Jon Pareles believed West's elevated status undermined the underdog quality that had accentuated his debut, writing that "for much of "Late Registration", the striver has turned into a hip-hop V.I.P.", with his "cool arrogance" being prominent on the songs. Hattie Collins of "NME" was highly impressed by the beats in the music, which she called "pure cranium-crushing boom bap at its best", but lamented the lack of "rubbish lyrics" and clumsy charm that made "The College Dropout" appeal to West's hardcore fans. In the eyes of "Spin" magazine's Jon Caramanica, the improved versatility and eccentricity of West's flow still "pales in comparison to his sonic ambition".


title: Late Registration

text: "Late Registration" appeared on year-end best album lists for 2005 by numerous publications, including being named the best album of the year by "Spin", "Time", and "USA Today". "Rolling Stone" also gave the album this accolade, with the staff hailing it as a "sweepingly generous, absurdly virtuosic hip-hop classic". In "The Village Voice"s 2005 Pazz & Jop nationwide poll of 795 popular music critics, "Late Registration" finished at number one with 2,525 points. It scored a 107-point lead, standing as the narrowest margin in the poll's history. Christgau, the poll's supervisor, also ranked "Late Registration" first on his own list, and assigned it an "A+" grade in his "Consumer Guide" column. On the "Washington City Paper"s list of the top 20 favourite albums of 2005 calculated from points assigned by the magazine's music writers, the album finished at number four with 43 points, becoming one of the five albums to score over 40 that year. "Late Registration" was West's second consecutive album to be rated "XXL" by "XXL", the magazine's highest rank, which had been awarded to only 16 other hip hop albums by 2005.


title: Late Registration

text: "MSN Music" selected the album as the seventh best album of the 2000s decade; the staff praised West's work with Brion for expanding his genre range. "PopMatters" ranked "Late Registration" as the 15th best album of the 2000s, while "Pitchfork" named it the decade's 18th best album. "Observer Music Monthly" listed the album as the 19th best of the decade, and the staff noted that West reached his ambition to be "bigger than hip-hop". "Consequence" named "Late Registration" the 26th best album of the 2000s, whereas "La Vanguardia" picked it as the 36th best of the decade. The album finished at number 40 on "Rolling Stone"s list of the best albums of the 2000s, with the staff highlighting West's decision to work with Brion.


title: Late Registration

text: In 2012, "Rolling Stone" placed "Late Registration" at number 118 on their revised list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". The album was the highest entry among both recent albums and the three West releases to appear on the list. On a 2013 list published by "Vibe" of the 50 best albums since 1993, it was positioned 16th. In 2012, "Late Registration" was placed at number 100 on "Spin"s list of the 125 best albums of the past 25 years. Three years later, the magazine ranked the album at number 104 on its list of the 300 best albums of the past 30 years. "Late Registration" was later listed at number 117 on "Rolling Stone"s 2020 edition of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.


title: Late Registration

text: "Late Registration" was a contender for numerous industry awards. In December 2005, prior to the nominations being announced for the 2006 Grammy Awards, West complained that he would have a problem with not winning the Album of the Year award. "Late Registration" received a nomination for the award at the ceremony, and West recalled himself and Brion saying in the studio, "We're making the Album of the Year!" At the 2006 Grammys, the album won the award of Best Rap Album, becoming West's second consecutive album to do so and he delivered an acceptance speech that night. "Gold Digger" and "Diamonds From Sierra Leone" were winners of the awards for Best Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Song, respectively, at the same ceremony, while the former was also nominated for Record of the Year. West's nominations for the album were six of the eight awards that he contended for at the 2006 Grammys, tying with Mariah Carey and John Legend for the show's most nominations. Despite West having stating he would have a problem with not winning, he was happy with eight nominations. However, "Late Registration" won the Best Album award at the 2006 MP3.com Awards.


title: Late Registration

text: In its first week of release, "Late Registration" debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 with first week sales of 860,000 copies, selling over 600,000 more copies than Tony Yayo's album "Thoughts of a Predicate Felon" at number two. This stood as West's first chart-topping album in the United States and gave him first-week sales nearly double those of "The College Dropout". The album had the highest-selling first week sales in the US for two years, until West's next album "Graduation" suprassed it in September 2007 by selling 957,000 copies. The former's first-week sales also ranked as the seventh largest for a rap album up to March 3, 2020. In "Late Registration"s second week, it remained atop the "Billboard" 200 and sold an additional 283,000 copies, resulting in more than 1,140,000 copies sold within the first two weeks on the chart. In early 2006, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) awarded the album a triple platinum certification, indicating sales of 3,000,000 copies in the US. In June 2013, "Late Registration" reached 3,100,000 copies sold in the US. On July 21, 2022, it was certified five-times platinum by the RIAA for sales of 5,000,000 album-equivalent units in the country.


title: Late Registration

text: "Late Registration" also debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart. On February 14, 2006, it was certified double platinum by Music Canada (MC) for shipments of 200,000 copies in Canada. In the United Kingdom, the album entered the UK Albums Chart at number two for the issue date of September 5, 2005, being prevented from topping the chart by McFly's album "Wonderland". The former was certified triple platinum by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) for sales of 900,000 units in the UK on March 12, 2022. As of May 2018, "Late Registration" is the 12th highest-selling rap album in the UK in the 21st century. By November of that year, the album had sold 852,000 copies in the UK, ranking as West's highest selling album in the country. "Late Registration" reached numbers two and three on the Irish Albums Chart and Scottish Albums Chart, respectively, while it received a double platinum certification from the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) by the end of 2005 for pushing 30,000 units in Ireland. The album also charted within the top 10 in Norway, Greece, Switzerland, and Japan, as well as entering the European Top 100 Albums chart at number six. In 2021, "Vibe" reported that "Late Registration" became one of the rap albums released before 2010 to have been streamed one billion times through Spotify.


title: Late Registration

text: With the album's commercial success, West established himself as a recording artist in his own right outside of his earlier success with hip hop productions for other rappers. By surpassing the sales and acclaim of "The College Dropout", "Late Registration" proved that "the Kanye West experiment was no longer an experiment, it was a business model", according to author Shea Serrano. He explained, "It helped revitalize sampling soul music, it stitched together pop music themes generally attributable to the easily ignorable 'conscious rap' quadrant ('Gold Digger' is secretly a clever examination of the effects money has on relationships), and it created a precedent for the larger-scale gazing he'd go on to do. Rap followed along right behind him." As The Ringer's Logan Murdock chronicles, "Late Registration" proved his unprecedented artistry and relentless ambition with "a story to tell, an underdog tale that the masses related to", particularly the black community. The journalist relates his own experience connecting with the music, recalling having been a fan of West at 12 years old in Oakland, California, recognizing "the same struggles [he] spoke about plaguing my own environment. Like West, I had educated parents and a stable home life, but was aware of the world around me. Like West, I struggled to get acceptance, living a double life."


title: Late Registration

text: Released in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's destructive landfall on the US Gulf Coast, "Late Registration" was followed a few days later by West's appearance on the live telethon "A Concert for Hurricane Relief". In a segment alongside actor Mike Myers, he made harsh remarks criticizing the US government's response to the storm and the media for lacking empathy toward black people disproportionately impacted. According to Murdock, West's remarks were in line with both the criticism then-President George W. Bush would receive for his handling of Hurricane Katrina and "with the defiance that "Late Registration" displayed" through its insight into the "systematic racism faced by those in the water". A few weeks later, West performed tracks from the album at Abbey Road Studios in London for a live record entitled "Late Orchestration", which was released in April 2006 and also includes accompanying music videos on the home video edition.


title: Late Registration

text: In retrospect, "Highsnobiety" writer Shahzaib Hussain recognized "Late Registration" in West's opening trilogy of highly successful albums that "cemented his role as a progressive rap progenitor". Similarly, the staff of "XXL" felt satisfied with the album as the second work of West's education-themed trilogy and noted that a sophomore slump was avoided. The staff commented that it "relied on his production savvy to craft some of the most stellar beats of his career", which they felt was equaled by West's lyricism. According to Jay Willis of "GQ", "Late Registration" marked the last great album by "the old Kanye"; he remembered it being the soundtrack to many of his life activities.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: Victoria Jane Nuland (born July 1, 1961) is an American diplomat currently serving as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Nuland, a former member of the foreign service, served as the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State from 2013 to 2017 and US Permanent Representative to NATO from 2005 to 2008. She held the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest diplomatic rank in the United States Foreign Service. She is the former CEO of the Center for a New American Security, (CNAS), serving from January 2018 until early 2019, and is also the Brady-Johnson Distinguished Practitioner in Grand Strategy at Yale University, and a member of the board of the National Endowment for Democracy. She served as a nonresident fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution and senior counselor at the Albright Stonebridge Group.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: Nuland was born in 1961 to Sherwin B. Nuland, a surgeon born to Eastern European Jewish immigrants, and a Christian British native mother, Rhona McKhann, née Goulston. She graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in 1979. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University in 1983, where she studied Russian literature, political science, and history.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: From 1993 to 1996, during Bill Clinton's presidency, Nuland was chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott before moving on to serve as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs. From 2003 to 2005, Nuland served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, exercising an influential role during the Iraq War. From 2005 to 2008, during President George W. Bush's second term, Nuland served as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, where she concentrated on mobilizing European support for the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. In the summer of 2011, Nuland became special envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe and then became State Department spokesperson.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: In May 2013, Nuland was nominated to act as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and was sworn in on September 18, 2013. In her role as assistant secretary, she managed diplomatic relations with 50 countries in Europe and Eurasia, as well as with NATO, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: Nuland was the lead U.S. point person for the Revolution of Dignity, establishing loan guarantees to Ukraine, including a $1 billion loan guarantee in 2014, and the provisions of non-lethal assistance to the Ukrainian military and border guard. Along with Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, she is seen as a leading supporter of defensive weapons delivery to Ukraine. In 2016, Nuland urged Ukraine to start prosecuting corrupt officials: "It's time to start locking up people who have ripped off the Ukrainian population for too long and it is time to eradicate the cancer of corruption". While serving as the Department of State's lead diplomat on the Ukraine crisis, Nuland pushed European allies to take a harder line on Russian expansionism.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: During a June 7, 2016, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing titled "Russian Violations of Borders, Treaties, and Human Rights", Nuland described U.S. diplomatic outreach to the former Soviet Union and efforts to build a constructive relationship with Russia. During her testimony, Nuland noted Russia's 2014 invasion of Ukraine which she said, "shattered any remaining illusions about this Kremlin's willingness to abide by international law or live by the rules of the institutions that Russia joined at the end of the Cold War."


title: Victoria Nuland

text: On February 4, 2014, a recording of a phone call between Nuland and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, on January 28, 2014, was published on YouTube.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: Nuland left the State Department in January 2017, amid the departure of many career officials who left in the early days of the Trump administration.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: On January 24, 2018, "The Washington Post" published an interview with Nuland where she opined on the work of President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. She described an exodus of career foreign service officials and dysfunction within the State Department, and stated that the American judiciary and media were under assault. Nuland also decried a trend towards American isolationism, stating: "When we withdraw and say it's every nation for itself, you open the door for countries dissatisfied with their territorial position and influence in the international system — or with the system itself." She encouraged whole-government responses to international issues, stating, "Military leaders would be the first to say military solutions alone result in more and longer military entanglements. The role of American diplomats and political leaders is to work concurrently with the military to bring to bear all of the political tools we have."


title: Victoria Nuland

text: In January 2018, the Trump administration began new high-level engagements with Russian government officials by scheduling a meeting between Russia's top general Valery Gerasimov and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Curtis Scaparrotti. Nuland stated, "These channels are especially vital at a time when relations at the leader level are so unpredictable." She said Scaparrotti was "uniquely positioned" to address concerns about Russia's "ongoing military role in Ukraine, its INF treaty violations, its active measures to undermine Transatlantic democracies and the other strategic tensions that are driving the US and its allies to take stronger deterrent measures."


title: Victoria Nuland

text: On January 5, 2021, it was reported that President-elect Joe Biden would nominate Nuland to serve as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under Secretary-designate Antony Blinken. Hearings on Nuland's nomination were held by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 15, 2021. The committee favorably reported Nuland's nomination on April 21, 2021. On April 29, 2021, her nomination was confirmed by the entire Senate by voice vote, and she started her work as Under Secretary of State on May 3, 2021.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: In March 2022, Nuland expressed concern that Russia would get control of Ukraine's biological research facilities during its invasion of Ukraine.


title: Victoria Nuland

text: Nuland visited Delhi in March 2022 and suggested that there was an "evolution of thinking in India". She said that the US and Europe should be "defense and security partners" of India, and that Russia's invasion of Ukraine presents a "major inflection point in the autocratic-democratic struggle"..


title: Victoria Nuland

text: Nuland's husband, Robert Kagan, is a historian, foreign policy commentator at the Brookings Institution, and co-founder in 1998 of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC).


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: Blonde (alternatively titled blond) is the second studio album by American singer Frank Ocean. It was released on August 20, 2016, as a timed exclusive on the iTunes Store and Apple Music, and followed the August 19 release of Ocean's video album "Endless". The album features guest vocals from André 3000, Beyoncé, and Kim Burrell, among others. Production was handled by Ocean himself, alongside a variety of high-profile record producers, including Malay and Om'Mas Keith, who collaborated with Ocean on "Channel Orange", as well as James Blake, Jon Brion, Buddy Ross, Pharrell Williams, and Rostam Batmanglij, among others.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: In 2013, Ocean confirmed that his follow up to "Channel Orange" would be another concept album. Initially known as "Boys Don't Cry" and teased for a July 2015 release, the album suffered several delays and was the subject of widespread media anticipation leading up to its release. Beginning in 2013 and ending in 2016, recording for the album took place at New York's Electric Lady Studios and, after a period of writer's block, in London at Abbey Road Studios and in Los Angeles' Henson Recording Studios. Its physical release was accompanied by a magazine entitled "Boys Don't Cry".


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: "Blonde" features an abstract and experimental sound in comparison to Ocean's previous releases, encompassing styles such as R&B, pop, soul, avant-garde, indie rock, electronica, psychedelia, and hip hop. Ocean also notably makes use of pitch shifted vocals. The Beach Boys' "de facto" leader Brian Wilson is recognized as a strong influence on the album's lush arrangements and layered vocal harmonies, while the guitar and keyboard rhythms on the album are considered as languid and minimal. The album's themes surrounds Ocean dealing with his masculinity and emotions, inspired by sexual experiences, heartbreak, loss and trauma.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: "Blonde" received widespread acclaim, with critics praising Ocean's introspective lyrics and the album's unconventional and progressive sounds. Critics also complimented the album for challenging the conventions of R&B and pop music. Supported by its lead single "Nikes", the album debuted at number one in several countries, including the United States. It earned first week sales of 275,000 with album-equivalent units in the US, with 232,000 being pure sales, and was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Among other publications, "Time" named it the best album of 2016. Metacritic named it one of the most critically acclaimed albums of the year by music publications. In 2020, "Pitchfork" named it the best album of the 2010s and "Rolling Stone" ranked it at number 79 on their updated list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: On February 21, 2013, Ocean confirmed that he had started work on his next studio album, which he confirmed would be another concept album. He revealed that he was working with Tyler, the Creator, Pharrell Williams, and Danger Mouse on the record. He later stated that he was influenced by the Beach Boys and the Beatles. He also stated that he was interested in collaborating with Tame Impala and King Krule and wanted to record the album in Bora Bora. Ocean ultimately began recording at New York's Electric Lady Studios and, after a period of writer's block, recorded in London at Abbey Road Studios in addition to various other studios.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: In April 2014, Ocean stated that his second album was nearly finished. In June 2014, "Billboard" reported that the singer was working with a string of artists such as Happy Perez (whom he worked with on "Nostalgia, Ultra"), Charlie Gambetta and Kevin Ristro, while producers Hit-Boy, Rodney Jerkins and Danger Mouse were also said to be on board. On November 29, 2014, Ocean released a snippet of a new song supposedly from his upcoming follow-up to "Channel Orange" called "Memrise" on his official Tumblr page. "The Guardian" described the song as: "a song which affirms that despite reportedly changing labels and management, he has maintained both his experimentation and sense of melancholy in the intervening years".


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: In a personal letter which prefaced the "Boys Don't Cry" magazine, Ocean stated that he had been inspired by a photograph taken by the photography duo The Collaborationist of a young blonde girl in the back seat of a car. According to Jessica Haye of The Collaborationist, "It was more ambiguous in terms of gender and (Ocean) kind of placed his own experience onto the picture, so he brought a whole other story very personal to him in it". This photograph would be used in promotional material for the album. In his only interview of the album's release cycle, Ocean told Jon Caramanica that a conversation with a childhood friend from New Orleans helped him overcome his writer's block and convinced him to touch on his experiences growing up: "How we experience memory sometimes, it's not linear. We're not telling the stories to ourselves, we know the story, we're just seeing it in flashes overlaid".


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: "Blonde" features an abstract, atmospheric sound in comparison to Ocean's previous work, and utilizes a variety of unconventional musical elements. Besides the Beatles and the Beach Boys, the album draws influences from Stevie Wonder. Additionally, the Beach Boys' "de facto" leader Brian Wilson is recognized as a strong influence on the album's lush arrangements and layered vocal harmonies. Featuring a use of guitar and keyboard loops, writers noted that the rhythms on the album are languid and minimal. The album's themes surround Ocean dealing with his masculinity and emotions, inspired by personal heartbreak, loss and trauma.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: The album has been categorized as avant-garde soul. "The Quietus" wrote that its form "isn't that of a typical pop or R&B album – it tends to meander into his surreal dreamscapes, cut with jarring samples of conversation, odd effects, drifting guitars and beatless melodies that go on longer than expected." "The Daily Telegraph" described its sound as "a mellifluous concoction of shimmering melodic haze and ambient mood, almost entirely absent of anything resembling a singalong chorus or club groove." "The Observer"s Kate Mossman characterized the album as "cerebral, non-macho, boundary-free R&B." "The Guardian" tentatively likened "Blonde" to a collection of loose sketches and compared its "lush and atmospheric" tracks to experimental and texture-driven albums such as Radiohead's "Kid A" (2000) and Big Star's "Third" (1974), writing that "the tone is muted and introspective, full of spectral guitar and lacking not just hefty beats but any kind of percussion at all."


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: Discussing its musical eclecticism, "Rolling Stone" wrote that "this is an R&B album in only the most elastic and expansive sense of the term" and noted that "minimalist rock guitar and simple electric keyboard work drive numerous songs; twitchy rhythms and bizarre vocal effects creep in from the edges. Songs change shape subtly as they go, rarely ending in the same place they began." Ann Powers described the album as "equal parts psychedelic indie rock, post-IDM electronica, post-U2 / Coldplay-esque Eno-pop, post-Drake hip hop, and post-Maxwell drifty soul / R&B," and wrote that "experimental, druggy sonics abound." Nina Corcoran from "Consequence" described "Blonde" as featuring an avant-garde minimalist style similar to the work of Brian Eno, and noted that Ocean often utilizes "acoustic and electric guitars over traditional synth and bass-heavy R&B." "The Independent" wrote that "one track bleeds languidly into another, as if we're listening to a long, stoned stream-of-consciousness," and described the album's sound as a "glitchy, miasmic brand of R&B."


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: "The Daily Telegraph" noted Ocean's use of varispeed and Auto-Tune effects on his voice, while Greg Kot stated that he utilizes these audio processing devices to employ "two distinct voices, like characters in a play, a recurring theme throughout the album". "Spin" magazine's Dan Weiss compared his vocal treatments to those of Prince's aborted "Camille" album. "The Daily Telegraph" also suggested that Ocean's voice and melodies obscured the experimental nature of his compositions. The album has elements of spoken word. The track "Seigfried" interpolates a spoken word part by Elliott Smith and "White Ferrari" borrows musical elements from the Beatles' song "Here, There and Everywhere", while "Close to You" incorporates a Stevie Wonder sample. Guest vocalist André 3000 contributes a rapid rap verse on "Solo (Reprise)" which has been described as the album's only overt guest feature. In a 2022 interview, André revealed the song was recorded in Austin, Texas years before the album's release and originally featured a hip hop instrumental, before being replaced with a piano arrangement from James Blake. "Pretty Sweet" features gospel choir elements and dissonant noise. The album ends with an interview between Ocean and his brother Ryan, recorded when Ryan was 11 years old.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: On April 6, 2015, Ocean announced that his follow-up to "Channel Orange" would be released in July, as well as a publication, although no further details were released. The album was ultimately not released in July, with no explanation given for its delay. The publication was rumored to be called "Boys Don't Cry", and was slated to feature the aforementioned "Memrise", although the track did not make the final track listing.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: On July 2, 2016, Ocean hinted at a possible third album with an image on his website pointing to a July release date. The image shows a library card labeled "Boys Don't Cry" with numerous stamps, implying various due dates. The dates begin with July 2, 2015, and conclude with July 2016, and November 13, 2016. Ocean's brother, Ryan Breaux, further suggested this release with an Instagram caption of the same library card photo reading "BOYS DON'T CRY #JULY2016". On August 1, 2016, a live video hosted by Apple Music showing an empty hall was launched on the website boysdontcry.co. The website also featured a new design and the video marked the first update on the website since a "date due" post from July.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: On August 1, 2016, a video appeared that showed Ocean woodworking and sporadically playing instrumentals on loop. That same day, many news outlets reported that August 5, 2016, could be the release date for "Boys Don't Cry". The video was revealed to be promotion for "Endless", a 45-minute-long visual album that began streaming on Apple Music on August 19, 2016. The day after the release of "Endless", Ocean posted a new picture on his website advertising four pop-up shops in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and London. These shops contained hundreds of magazines, with three different covers and the album on a CD included with each cover, the covers also appear in the magazine, the first cover—which is part of a collection of pictures called "I'm a Morning Person"—was taken in Berlin, Germany, by Wolfgang Tillmans, whose song "Device Control" was sampled on the songs "Device Control" and "Higgs" on "Endless" and the alternate cover (which does not appear in the magazine, however, it is one of the alternate covers of the magazine) appears to have been shot by Viviane Sassen in Tokyo, Japan, and was taken as part of a collection of other photographs, which appears in the "Foxface" collection of pictures. The magazines were free and were available to one per person. Later in the day, the album was released exclusively on the iTunes Store and Apple Music. However, the track list differed from the digital version of the album, with an extended version of "Nikes" featuring Japanese rapper KOHH. "Nikes" was officially released as the album's lead single on August 20, 2016.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: Rather than going on a typical promotional tour playing radio festivals and appearing on television shows, Ocean spent a month after the release of "Blonde", traveling to countries such as China, Japan and France. He also chose not to submit "Blonde" for consideration at the Grammy Awards, stating "that institution certainly has nostalgic importance... It just doesn't seem to be representing very well for people who come from where I come from, and hold down what I hold down."


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: "Blonde" was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an average score of 87, based on 38 reviews. Aggregator AnyDecentMusic? gave it 8.4 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: "Mojo" reviewer Andy Cowan called it "a beguiling, meandering sprawl that rewards total immersion", while Tara Joshi deemed "Blonde" a "fully conceptualised, curated personal vision" and "a sublime and largely impressive album" in her review for "The Quietus". In "Rolling Stone", Jonah Weiner described the album as "by turns oblique, smolderingly direct, forlorn, funny, dissonant and gorgeous: marvel of digital-age psychedelic pop." Writing for "The Guardian", Tim Jonze hailed "Blonde" as "one of the most intriguing and contrary records ever made". He said that "what originally appear to be "Blonde"s flaws – its loose ends and ambiguities – end up as its strengths," concluding that "what gradually emerges is a record of enigmatic beauty, intoxicating depth and intense emotion." According to "Pitchfork" journalist Ryan Dombal, while "Channel Orange" had boasted a more eclectic range of styles, "Blonde" showed Ocean expressing his romantic, philosophical, and melancholic ideas and emotions over an especially spare musical backdrop, giving the record an intimacy that "attracts the ear, bubbles the brain, raises the flesh". In "Vice", Robert Christgau admired Ocean's reliance on his "expressive and capable but unathletic voice", the candid stories explored on "Good Guy" and "Facebook Story", and more aggressive songs such as "Nights". "As on "Channel Orange", however, his angst is a luxury of leisure", Christgau wrote, finding the details of Ocean's interpersonal lyrics occasionally relatable but more often "specific to his social status".


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: Neil McCormick was somewhat less enthusiastic. In "The Daily Telegraph", he wrote that "Blonde" "should be celebrated as part of a generational shift away from the obvious in pop", while finding the record to be "meandering, contemplative and introverted", suggesting that it would be a laborious experience for some listeners. AllMusic's Andy Kellman deemed it "undiluted and progressive" but qualified his praise by stating that "over the course of an hour, all the sparsely ornamented ruminations can be a bit of a chore to absorb, no matter how much one hangs on each line". Andy Gill was more critical in "The Independent", deeming much of the music lethargic, aimless, and devoid of strong melodies. "HipHopDX" reviewer William Ketchum III in a mixed review said that the singer "sometimes delivers only what's necessary to make his point, while other efforts come across as meandering and incomplete".


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: At the end of 2016, "Blonde" appeared on a number of critics' lists ranking the year's best albums. According to Metacritic, it was the third most prominently ranked album of 2016.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: In the first week of release, "Blonde" debuted at number one on the US "Billboard" 200 and recorded 276,000 album-equivalent units, including 232,000 copies of the album sold. The songs on the album were collectively streamed more than 65.4 million times, second behind only the streams for "Views" by Drake during that week. "Forbes" estimated that "Blonde" earned Ocean nearly one million in profits after one week of availability, attributing this to him releasing the album independently and as a limited exclusive release on iTunes and Apple Music. "Blonde" has generated 404 million on-demand audio streams for its songs in the US through February 9, 2017, according to Nielsen Music. The album has earned 620,000 album-equivalent units, 348,000 of which were copies sold.


title: Blonde (Frank Ocean album)

text: On July 9, 2018, "Blonde" was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).