While West maturely assesses the insane injustices of the world in a non-preachy, vivid fashion, his aggressiveness is in his ideas, not in his words.

Kayne West’s new album, “Late Registration,” is one of the most consistent, poetically political and authentic albums in years.

While other hip-hop and rap artists waste their cleverness rapping about rap’s overplayed truisms, West compiles a series of songs both personal and politically engaged with a masterful usage of sampling.

He uses some of the same elements of cliché rap, but only as an ultimate rhyming trick or to subtly criticize their own lack of validity in the real world. Here, diamonds are from Sierra Leone, not hanging around a gangsta’s neck. And custom rims are mentioned more as self-mockery than as a show-off kind of naive pride.

“Late Registration” is an actual album, not a collection of over-produced songs desperately trying to be radio hits. Each song seems to be more an extension of West’s critical thinking and musical assessment than individual entities. The songs evolve like scenes from a good film do: fluidly and with sensorial logic. West ingeniously mixes emotional anecdotes of his own life (“Seven years old / caught you with tears in your eyes” in “Hey Mamma”) with brilliantly political pleas (“We die from drugs / Over there, they die from what we buy from drugs” in “Diamonds from Sierra Lione”) and music business criticism (“Now the former slaves trade hooks for Grammys” in “Crack Music”).

This unabashedly honest response to what is wrong with the world is a refreshing reminder that rap can still be a powerful political tool when it wants to. And while other rappers may share Kanye’s courage to say it like it is, they often get caught up on the adolescent rebellion of saying swear words and forget about serious issues.

Eminem may have the balls to utter anything that comes to his mind, but he would be intellectually incapable of addressing politically-relevant issues the way West so masterfully does.

While West maturely assesses the insane injustices of the world in a non-preachy, vivid fashion, his aggressiveness is in his ideas, not in his words. His use of swear words isn’t gratuitous. It serves a cultural purpose within the social story he is telling. And there is courage in that. There is an honest heroism in using his space to shed light to class issues, instead of simply trying to shock prudish America, diss his ex-wife or make fun of Michael Jackson’s nose.

Unfortunately, America is so afraid of the surface of things as opposed to their substance, that it allows rap songs to play on the radio only if mutilated. Strong words that add to the wholeness of the music need to be bleeped out for it to be played in the airwaves.

And there is something incredibly dishonest about having to listen to a song like “Gold Digger” (about so much more than gold-diggers: “she was spose to buy ya shorty TYCO with ya money/ She went to the doctor got lipo with ya money”). “Late Registration” may not have the radio hit material that gets you dancing at the club. It refuses to be that easy. Instead, it paints a picture of a world in dire need of change using the language of pop, but going miles and miles beyond it.

The same can’t be said of R. Kelly’s “TP.3 Reloaded.” While “Playa’s Only” (featuring The Game) is one of the catchiest, most delicious songs currently on the radio, the rest of the album feels like a half-assed rendition of Keith Sweat’s B-side non-hits. He also tries some really awkward collaboration with Elephant Man that feels more early-’90s annoying reggae pop than Latin-tinged (and still annoying) reggaetone.

Stuck in the same clichés, repeated ad nauseam, and lacking good beats, the album’s only chance for redemption comes with the five-part series of “Trapped in the Closet.” It is hard to say if “Trapped” is a series of songs, an opera, a hip hopera or R. Kelly’s own veiled coming-out story. Whatever the case, “Trapped in the Closet” is quite possibly one of the most brilliantly post-postmodern pieces of music ever. So contemporary in language and conventionally smart in structure, its crescendo is both orgasmic and Shakespearian. Quite a feat coming from the same man who delivers: “Big chips at the bar spending / GT with the wheels spinning / Let's get somewhere and get high for the rest of the night” on “Happy Summertime.”

And while rap, hip-hop and R&B could be divided into good fluff (50 Cent, Eminem, Young Gunz), dumb fluff (Nelly, Chingy) and un-listenable fluff (Eve), it would be much harder to categorize Akon. His debut album “Trouble” negotiates between fluff (“Say that ain't gangster / Niggers fronting like they hard / But I know their pussy from the start”) to anti-police-abuse ballads (“I won't let you lock me down / I won't let you push me round / I won't let you stop me now”).

Akon does allow himself to dive deep into superficial rap and all of its hackneyed elements more often than not. But he also brings authentic substance to his album with the deliciously fast-paced little voice in “Lonely” that comes back later in the album and even some traditional African music tinges in certain songs.

If we can think of music the same way we think of film, the Eisenstein editing technique of marrying two different shots to create a third meaning may be fitting. In both “Locked up” and “Ghetto” Akon creates incredible beats but not to the detriment of the lyrics, which still hold meaning. Here he fuses the guilty pleasures of dance-inducing riffs with the incomparable power of harmonized words.

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