Posted on Dec 1, 2007
Review: Kanye West's GRADUATION
mr. west is trying to seduce usMy rating: stars
The West denies change, defies change... resists change. But change is the basic nature of everything that is.... And this is how philosophy, art, morality and certain other things are established. But all established things are temporary, and the nature of being is, like music, changing."
- James Stewart, "The Development of the Black Revolutionary Artist" (1968)
How to approach the spectacle that has become popular music: A world where artists make more money from ringtones than album sales; where child stars are lured from their disheveled fade into oblivion simply to be mocked for being disheveled and fading into oblivion. These are tenuous times for those at the top. This anxiety permeates Kanye West 's third studio album, Graduation, which lives up to the hype generated by his sales "feud" with gangsta rapper 50 Cent.
It is an album of foreboding, futuristic synths and eerie organs. "Good Morning" opens the album nicely with a breezy Elton John vocal sample and playful boasting. The first single, "Can't Tell Me Nothing," with its paranoid, Dr. Dre-esque strings, directly addresses the notion of loneliness at the top. ("I feel the pressure/Under more scrutiny/And what I do?/Act more stupidly/Bought more jewelry/More Louis V/My mom couldn't get through to me/The drama, people suin' me/I'm on TV/Talking like it's just you and me.") The '85 Prince-like "Flashing Lights" engagingly chronicles the ups and downs of life with a high maintenance girlfriend. The Daft Punk-sampled second single, "Stronger," is irrestistible and crackles with the urgency that we've come to expect from a Kanye single. Only he could turn a song about an insecure rap star sweating a girl in the club into a motivational anthem.
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