Kanye West’s third album, Graduation, is a blessing in a year that has been abysmal for hip-hop. While Kanye is still a relatively weak MC, Graduation is an original, entertaining and tight album, and though it lacks any true club-bangers, it’s still the best hip-hop album of 2007.
With no skits and only thirteen tracks, Graduation is easily Kanye’s most cohesive release to date. A glance at the list of artists he samples—Daft Punk, Can, Michael Jackson, Elton John and Steely Dan, to name a few—would make the album a stylistic mish-mash and a hell of a mess. It’s not, mostly because of Kanye’s newfound stylistic aesthetic —his music sounds like it’s from the year 2150 and made with the assistance of a robot army.
The most obvious element of this aesthetic is the jaw-dropping use of synthesizer throughout the album. In particular, on “Champion” and “Flashing Lights,” the instrument is so prominent it seems like Kanye has made the transition from hip-hop to synth-pop. Certainly no hip-hop album to date has had beats this flamboyantly cheesy yet sweetly satiable, and Kanye deserves praise for expanding the sonic conventions of the genre with sped-up soul samples, recycled P-funk and sweeping string crescendos.
However, while the beats are outstanding, their brilliance comes at the expense of the rhymes. Kanye’s flow has never been his strong suit, but here he seems like a caricature of himself. Thankfully, he’s still funny, rhyming about Deloreans, black Kate Mosses, and P.E. class, but there’s very little poignancy anywhere on Graduation. While it was predictable that Kanye’s enormous and ever-expanding ego would get in the way of his lyrical relevance, it’s still disappointing to discover that only “Big Brother,” and “Everything I Am” have anything resembling an important message to deliver.
Still, the album is remarkably consistent, save for the disastrous collaboration with Mos Def on “Drunk and Hot Girls.” That track aside, those who enjoyed Kanye’s first two releases will continue to be satisfied, while the expanded sonic palette might even attract a few new listeners. Although it isn’t the masterpiece some hoped for, Graduation is a worthy successor to Late Registration.
