Kanye’s Graduation, record review, mp3
I got Kanye West’s (wikipedia, myspace) newest, Graduation a while ago. Sure, I wanted to be one vote against 50 cent but I also liked his previous albums and the tracks that I’d heard before the release.
Overall, it’s more of the same, but still different from Kanye. Good samples, interesting musically and good lyrics[1] overall. It has it’s pitfalls, but it has a few excellent tracks and a bunch of good ones. Also, I’m really glad he decided to give the skits a skip. I found them very annoying on his previous albums and I’d just end up deleting them from iTunes so I can listen to the album unencumbered [2].
The album starts out well with “Good Morning [Intro]”, which is one of my favorites in fact. It’s a med-slow jam with a simple beat, but the music and lyrics just work for me.
“Champion” and “Stronger” are both good and don’t break the rhythm of the album at all. The Daft Punk sample is a bit odd at first but it makes sense eventually. “I Wonder” seems mostly a sample and just a little bit of Kanye. Am I wrong? “Good Life” is sort of a classic “throw your hands up” sort of hip hop track. The super-sped up vocals (very high pitched) are off-putting if I listen for them.
Whenever I hear “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, all I can see is Zach Galifianakis and Will Oldham rapping and hip thrusting along to this song. Great video, but it sort of separates it for me from seeing it as a song.
The album has it’s major missteps here. “Barry Bonds” is subpar and “Drunk and Hot Girls” is just bad. On Late Registration I initially didn’t like “Crack Music” but eventually the lyrics won me over. Here, I don’t think anything will redeem “Drunk and Hot Girls”.
“Flashing Lights” helps me recover from the previous two. Nice strings and strong beat. It leads into my favorite track, “Everything I Am”. It’s another slow jam. It’s got a great soulful piano part and the lyrics about materialism and gangerstism are good and meaningful.
Kanye West - Everything I Am (mp3)
The rest of the album goes out smoothly. “The Glory” is the strings-and-soul-big-beat song of this album (the “Golddigger” of this album, if you will). Initially I was annoyed by the Chris Martin-featuring “Homecoming” but I found it going around in my head after a few listens. I guess it’s catchy. “Big Brother” is the track about Jay-Z. It’s a bit vengeful/ bragging. The music is good, but the boastful lyrics can be a bit much if I　really pay attention to them.
Check out more tracks at hype machine. You can buy it at insound.
[1] I hear lyrics about last after music, production and most other elements of the music, so for me lyrics only become really important on repeated listens.
[2] Also, I end up retitling/ reartisting all the tracks with “featuring so-and-so” to putting that in the song title. For example artist: “Kanye West feat T-Pain”, song: “Good Life” to artist: “Kanye West” song: “Good Life ft. T-Pain” because I like sorting by artist in iTunes and the “featuring” always screws that up, putting parts of the album after the rest of the album.
