10 Songs That Ruined Otherwise Perfect Albums
7. The College Dropout - "The New Workout Plan"
To call Kanye West’s debut a perfect album is to miss the point slightly. The thing’s a mess - it could be far more streamlined, and the skits - while better than a lot of rap albums - are inessential. But its messiness is part of the charm, and as such it’s a perfect introduction to the om-mic career of a guy like West.
“The New Workout Plan” is the one outright dud on the album. Coming 11 tracks in - like a few of his albums, this one’s badly top loaded - we’ve got an idea of Kanye the character by this point. He’s not from the typical hip hop background, and he’s happy to recognise his flaws, but he’s a charming presence (this was before he became deeply weird and problematic).
Then, he goes and blows it all with “The New Workout Plan”, a bafflingly misguided comedy track which undoes a lot of the good will he built up over the rest of the album. The casual sexism is kept to a minimum, right up until this spoof of instructional exercise videos.
You can tell he had the video in mind when putting the song together - unfortunately, the addition of visuals only heightens the lameness of the song.