Rating:
  Review Date: September 18, 2007
  Website: Kanye West Website
  Label: Roc-A-Fella Records

Kanye West “Graduation” Album Review
My apologies for posting the featured review late this week, but I had to let Kanye West’s “Graduation” marinate for a couple days. In that time, one of Kanye’s verses from Everything I Am kept jumping out at me:

I never be picture perfect Beyonce
Be light as Al be or black as Chauncey
Remember him from Blackstreet? He was black as the street was
I never be laid back as this beat was
I never could see why people reach a
Fake ass facade that they couldn’t keep up
You see how I creep up?
You see how I play a big role in Chicago like Queen Latifah?
I never rock a mink coat in the wintertime like Killa Cam
Or rock some mink boots in the summertime like Will.I.Am
Let me know if you feel it man
‘Cause everything I’m not made me everything I am

Kanye Is Who Kanye Is
I felt that song because it kinda explains the reason I like Kanye West. Kanye is who Kanye is – plain and simple. He doesn’t put on a front. He doesn’t try to act hard. He’s a hip-hopper that grew up well off and well loved. And despite the mainstream’s ignorant tendency to laugh at Kanye for that, still holding strong to some perceived necessity for hardness among rappers, I respect him for being true to who he is regardless. As the homie Chuck D might say, “Hip-Hop says you can be what you wanna be/ As long as you ain’t F-A-K-E.”

So yeah – the real Kanye can be a little crazy sometimes. He throws an occasional award show temper tantrum. But I felt he deserved one or two of those trophies. And sure, he made that stupid george-bush-doesn’t-care-about-black-people remark. But if he wouldn’t have said it like a third-grader in the principle’s office, people may have realized that he was right. And I guess he is an active member of this despicable record-sale-induced fabricated beef. But that was obviously something 50 Cent started and Kanye likely agreed to so Fiddy wouldn’t whip that ass. Shit, Curtis tells me to play beef and I’m gonna play beef too.

Kanye is who Kanye is. We can’t fault him for getting upset when he loses an award he probably deserved. We can’t expect him to be Barack Obama and criticize the government eloquently using legal jargon. And we can’t expect a skinny kid from the suburbs to stand up to a chiseled thug who’s been shot nine times and say, “Nah, I’m not doing this childish beef thing just to encourage the drama-addicted masses to buy more records. This is my art, dogg!” ‘Cause Curtis would whip his ass for saying some high and mighty bullshit like that. Besides, it’s not like your local news is reporting on the upcoming hip-hop release unless there’s a possibility of somebody getting shot, right?

Graduation
But you know what we can expect from Kanye? Good music. Last week, Kanye told Jimmy Kimmel this was the best album of his career. I personally wouldn’t agree with that statement, being more a fan of the first two, but I understand why Kanye feels “Graduation” is his best. The album demonstrates not only his ability to evolve as an artist, but also his experimental determination to expand the boundaries of hip-hop music. And from my perspective, that’s exactly what mainstream hip-hop needs right now.

This experimentation stands out in several tracks that show Kanye reaching for different sounds. Stronger is an electronic house track. Champion relies on a Steely Dan rock cut. Drunk and Hot Girls is on some German “krautrock” shit. And Flashing Lights is an amazing mix of synthesizers, orchestra strings and soul vocals.

In other tracks, Kanye shows his incomparable ability to blend samples from pretty much any type of music in composing his beat. Good Morning mixes Elton John with Jay-Z. Good Life mixes Michael Jackson samples with T-Pain vocals. Everything I Am invites DJ Premier to cut up some old school Public Enemy over a mellow R&B track. And Bittersweet Poetry invites John Mayer to lay some vocals over a classic rock sampled beat.

And as usual, Kanye shines when implementing his signature soul beats. I Wonder samples vocals from soul singer Labi Siffre. Can’t Tell Me Nothing revolves around powerful vocals of Australian singer Connie Mitchell. The Glory is based on a soulful chorus sampled from the late Laura Nyro. And Homecoming, which could be the banger of the album, features Coldplay’s Chris Martin singing over a ridiculous gospel piano backbeat.

Musically, “Graduation” is definitely the biggest accomplishment of Kanye West’s career. Lyrically, it fell a little short of “The College Dropout” and “Late Registration.” But that’s all good. It seems like that was the direction Kanye needed to go with this one – a more musically experimental album that would open his music up to an even larger fan base. And “Graduation” should do just that. If you haven’t picked it up already, you should. It is definitely worth the listen. Peace.

Related:
If you liked this album, and you haven’t already, you definitely must peep Kanye West “Late Registration” – as mentioned earlier, my favorite. You can also check out Kanye’s production skills in Talib Kweli “Ear Drum”, Common “Finding Forever” and Common “Be”.

Album Track Listing:

1. Good Morning
2. Champion
3. Stronger
4. I Wonder
5. Good Life feat. T-Pain
6. Can’t Tell Me Nothing
7. Barry Bonds feat. Lil Wayne
8. Drunk and Hot Girls feat. Mos Def
9. Flashing Lights feat. Dwele
10. Everything I Am feat. DJ Premier
11. The Glory
12. Homecoming feat. Chris Martin
13. Big Brother
14. Goodnight
15. Bittersweet Poetry feat. John Mayer