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". 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". Rankings 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 Voices 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 Papers list of the top 20 favourite albums of 2005 calculated from points assigned by the magazine's music writers, the album finished