crypticcradle's Full Review: Graduation [PA] by Kanye West
As the normal monologue of unusable and uninteresting facts were being presented on the current state of the economy and its recession, Charles sat with his notebook opened, pencil idle, eyes focused on the chaos of frizz and split-ends that made-up the hair of ne'er-do-well Christine Jacoby. She stunk like cigarette butts and horribly cheap perfume for non-cover-up, but as she was a product of apathy which culminated in her hair that served as the psychedelic maze Charles's eyes could follow for the 45 minutes he was stuck in economy, he cared not of her status as the untouchable save for the few dead-beats that made up her pack. This guy only had one mission: get out of high school. Graduation was next week, and he was a few days away from five easy Cs, and an inconspicuous escape from the prison that was Anywheresville, USA.
In this thought of glory, another image entered Charles's mind, and that was nearly four years ago. The first time he walked through those high school doors and smelled the strange, anxiety-inducing scent of freshly washed floors meshing with the rubber souls of sneakers as the school was awash with anticipation for a new year, new chances to fall in love with, new opportunities to move upward through the rigid social caste system, and so on. He remembers what he was wearing down to the red buttons on his shirt. The older girls with the perky 17-year-old tits, all the guys standing in circles with mean mugs for the young bucks entering, the friendly faces of teachers holding out optimism for a manageable year. And Charles thought, When will those emotions ever come back to zap me again? Then he remembered graduation, and he lit up like New York City on not just any night, but one of those Saturdays when nobody can go inside, it's just got to be a party.
- - - - -
If anything, Kanye West's third album, "Graduation", is Senioritis at its best. And I know his little theme with "The College Dropout", "Late Registration", and now this, is meant for college, but this doesn't remind me of college graduation. You have to work for that. Kanye doesn't, so you get a high school simile. Any dumbass can graduate high school, after all. Show up, do a certain percentage of homework to get Cs, get the hell out. Kanye has taken this approach to album tres, with pared-back beats that reach far less than that on either of his past albums (it works), and he's content with merely putting his voice on the track without much apparent thought on the content of his rhymes (doesn't work). He relies on his foremost talent, picking out samples and turning them into something totally divine. He lets those voices from the void of Planet Transcendence speak to the meek masses without interruption by a live string section or singers. In total, this shouldn't be good enough to make this album easy to recommend. But it is.
Like our friend Charles, Kanye is simply ready to party and rejoice. Unless you've had a real-life "Lost" experience and just returned to your love ones, like, two minutes ago, you've heard the single "Stronger", a Daft Punk hi-jacking dance-a-thon ridden with a simple drum pattern and appropriately dark chords on the synthesizer. Well, the album is like that in the sense that it rides the living sh*t out of that sample, is sparsely and deliberately mixed, and has inane lyrics that jump all over the place and are, at-times, just plain dumb ("I know god put you in front of me / So how the hell could you front on me / It's a thousand yous, there's only one of me / I'm trippin', I'm caught up in a moment, right?"). And it's fuuuuuuuuuun. It lets your little kid out. It's a far cry from being life-affirming or even that high-quality, but that's why I have all those Radiohead, TV On The Radio, and Aesop Rock albums.
Of this, "The Glory" and "Champion" are the most soul-shaking offerings destined to pull up the corners of your mouth until your cheeks stick way out and beat the rest of your face to all those little sunrays. They differ from "Stronger" in that their samples cut more to your emotions, less to your hips, and make you feel like nothing can stop you. "The Glory" has Kanye freaking some unfamiliar soul sample into, yet again, something that sounds like Michael Jackson circa Jackson five, over some sparse string samples and a wide-open bassline that gets your blood pumping on some back-in-the-day, while Kanye raps about nothing. "Champion" possesses the lyrical substance hardly heard on the album, a track with a vintage feel where the artist talks about coming up from the hard days, and without a doubt sounds like a song that could fit along with the sappy rags-to-riches film it references "The Pursuit of Happyness". The beat is quite a repetitious four-beat measure of severely cut soul vocals and warm synthesizer, breaking every so often into a fully-fledged synth-pop electric storm with vocals "Did you realize you are a champion?" coming in. Overall, these highlights help anchor a largely celebratory album, as Kanye has gotten the status and recognition he's always told us he deserves.
Amongst all to hear here, I think it's positively telling that "Drunk and Hot Girls" has the prime placement as the longest song set in the middle of this sea of big time self-aggrandization and retrospection. This sing-songy, sinister, slow and smartly synth-layered jam on, well, girls who are drunk and hot, is the epitome of the well-produced nonsense that highly populates "Graduation". Then again, strangely, it's one of the few songs here I wouldn't consider to be about nonsense. Follow me now. Accompanied by Mos Def, Kanye laments the frivolity of chasing around easy tail at the club, then turning it around and complaining about the tail he's chasing, detailing the end of his night with, "Oh now you sober, how'd I know you'd say that?" In its own way, this track makes a totally unpretentious commentary of male/female relationships of the 21st century via the sleazy nightclubs in a modern urban wasteland. On the other hand most songs on "Graduation" could be titled about anything, considering they are just about how wonderful Kanye is and how everyone needs to stay off his jock, so in the midst of that, you could actually consider "Drunk and Hot Girls" refreshing. A strange centerpiece, but then again, that's "Graduation".
"Graduation" is frivolity, too. Some of it is typical fun Kanye frivolity, as I have mentioned, but some of it borders on banality. Take it as you perceive it. "Good Life" blasts with synthesizers, thick with chipmunk voices, and is quite gleeful like kids chasing rainbows, but to me you hear it a few times, and it boils down to a generic R&B dude (T-Pain) singing a generic hook with some rapper dude talking about next-to-nada. Sounds like a radio hit to me, but not much else. "Flashing Lights" again hooks up bright keys with darker undertones in string samples, creating a brooding soundscape, but while Dwele is a bit better of a singer, Kanye's raps about missing his love are trite and hard to follow, nonsense. These are a few of the coasting points for Kanye, you know, you can tell these songs are so easy for him to make. He was having fun, but he was screwing around.
The most ill-advised move Kanye made on his latest album, though, was "Big Brother", the hopelessly sentimental closing track. It's idol worship at its worst as Kanye swoons over Jay-Z for several minutes, detailing the history of their relationship, painfully commenting on insignificant details. It's beyond paying homage, to the point where he's rapping, "If you admire somebody, you should go ahead tell them / People never get the flowers while they can still smell them." It's a nice thought, but corny, and such a horrid way to end your own album, kissing someone else's behind.
Before I revert to the negative, though, I must say that "Can't Tell Me Nothing" and "Everything I Am" are the tracks here that go beyond the celebratory and self-aggrandizing tracks to his classic introspection. The former sports a thick bassline with yearning soul vocals echoing over top, as Kanye rags on himself for being, if you believe it, too damn arrogant, and forgetting where he came from through fame. The latter is a laid-back, piano-laced beaut, a companion piece to "Can't Tell Me Nothing", as Kanye traces back to his roots over DJ Premier scratches that are sure to push the nostalgic buttons in any-damn-one. So even if you want to hate on "Graduation" as a whole, if you can't get into the simple dance and talk sh*t songs around these parts, these two tracks are in there to show you the man still has it going on.
Let's be real, though. Let's. Be. Real. Kanye is best at his most ambitious. Like packing in albums with beats and concepts that reach, with childrens choirs and spoken-word poets, live strings and Jon Brion, and rhymes with purpose to make up for an earnest but vastly unskilled rhyme steelo. It's not totally fair to compare to the past, I know it, but I know what Kanye is capable of, and "Graduation" doesn't near the ends of his talents. Still, if I'm being so real, there is more than a handful of songs I can listen to over and over on "Graduation". He's still got more soul in his pinky finger than most have in their whole being, and even when Senioritis crept on up, even when Kanye West seemed like he was just glad to get out another few songs to the masses, the music still hits close to where you are.
Given the remarkable critical and commercial success of 2005 s Late Registration, Kanye West s rich, rewarding Graduation. Ever savvy, West flouts tho...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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