kanye west graduation album cover alternate

(Ironically, the latter all have roots in West's hometown of Chicago.) What he ends up with is a record that splits the difference between two distinctive styles: his familiar strings and brass, helium vocal samples, and warm soul samples on one side corroded rave stabs, vinegary synth patches, and weirdly modulated electronic noises on the other.

His production choices reinforce that belief: Here, Kanye splices his well-articulated production style with a brand new set of influences- most of them European. When he raps 'I shop so much I can speak Italian' on 'Champion', it's obvious he's holding up worldliness as a point of pride. Where College Dropout and Late Registration mostly functioned as contagious nostaglia trips, Graduation finds him settling into the pocket instead of looking inside for answers, he's looking out to the world. It also caps off an incredible (maybe even unprecedented) run: In terms of consistency, prolificness, and general all-around ability, it's hard to find anyone in mainstream rap who can touch what he's achieved within the same timeframe. Though it doesn't quite match College Dropout or Late Registration in pleasure-center overload, West's third album in four years is both his most consistent and most enterprising yet. This is a prize fight between two heavyweight boxers moving in polar-opposite directions the former weakly flailing through a creative crisis and a serious absence of hunger, the latter trying to transcend America by setting his sights on nothing less than the entire world.įor all the pageantry, the most substantial takeaway from Kanye's new album is the realization that he might actually deserve the legendary status he constantly ascribes to himself. Or maybe it's because Universal labelmates 50 and West seem more like they're doing this for us than for themselves.

Maybe it's because 50's a shadow of his former self and no longer considered among the best, biggest, or most anything. Maybe it's because album sales don't really work as a precise measure of absolute popularity anymore. Kanye record-sales standoff, even this showdown's closest followers would probably admit there's something faintly procedural about it. While rap music famously thrives on the kind of drama surrounding this week's 50 vs.

Kanye west graduation album cover alternate