KANYE WEST - Graduation

And it's Kanye again. Hip-hop's no-longer-so-new man, the producer who has radically shifted all the genre's paradigms, has returned to go it alone, wrapping up the trilogy he began a few years ago with "College Dropout".

While our beach towels were battling sand and wind, and we lay on our backs thinking of nothing, Mr West showed up on the music scene with the new single "Stronger", a video seen on YouTube by pretty much everyone – a video that quotes the futurist, android world of Daft Punk.

Let's start here, then, with Kanye West and Stronger, with Kanye West and Daft Punk. Indeed, because it's precisely by drawing from the thriving French electronic scene that Kanye West finds the inspiration that makes the album worthwhile. And let's say it right away, for the sake of clarity, that we really liked "Stronger" - it's, conservatively speaking, among the top 5 singles of the year. It's a small, revolutionary track within today's hip-hop universe, as revolutionary as it is backward-looking, carrying the scent of that historic kinship that was Afrika Bambaataa and Kraftwerk. For many, hip-hop was born there, and that's where Kanye West sets off again from too, dusting off once more, just as Afrika Bambaataa did, the European dance scene, and once again putting together a cross-genre product that is therefore significant in itself.

"Planet Rock" was the symbol and turning point of it all; "Stronger" is the realization of what, to this day, can truly be considered the genre's greatest exponent. Sampling Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (Daft Punk), Kanye West not only pays tribute to a monument of contemporary electronic music, but also builds a perfect, unassailable pop gem. You couldn't ask for more, not even by calling in the now-overexposed Timbaland.

Then, on that same beach, with the usual beach towels flapping in the wind and the usual thoughts about nothing, one read with some irritation about an improbable chart battle between Kanye West and 50 Cent, with the latter threatening to quit music if he didn't outsell his rival in the first week. Now, with things settled and for the sake of clarity, but above all with the numbers in hand, let's read them verbatim: 957,000 copies for "Graduation" and 691,000 copies for "Curtis", on American soil alone. In the rest of the world, Kanye doubled his rival's sales. If words mean anything, 50 Cent should quit the music scene, much to our delight, but that won't happen, given the ex-convict's latest paranoid statement: "In his entire career, Kanye West has never sold even half of what I totaled with my first album alone. It's clear that Def Jam orchestrated the whole thing, investing money to buy up a huge number of copies to make him look good." We'll let you draw your own conclusions.

We, on the other hand, would rather tell you more about the album itself, which unfortunately leaves a bit of a bitter taste, perhaps because we were led on by that explosive launch. It's a less substantial, less dense, less wide-ranging and musically less rich work than its predecessor "Late Registration".

It's Kanye West's most pop album, certainly less sharp and clever, but an easier listen. It sits alongside the purveyors of smart-but-shelf-ready hip-hop: among the most recent examples, Common stands out — incidentally produced by Kanye himself.

The atmospheres skilfully built on "Flashing Lights" nod to the cinematic sensibility of Craig Armstrong, rich with pathos, even melancholic. The slightly reflective mood continues with "Can't Tell Me Nothing", musically wrenched from soul-hip-hop archetypes: docile rapping and a black chorus. It stings without hurting: it stings because, against a vast musical tradition built on exactly these lines of bastardized hip-hop and precious pop exercises for sluggish MCs with sugary voices, Kanye doesn't fail to clock in here too, building himself a track made for nodding your head back and forth, for dark nights, for arenas lit up by lighters. It's a hip-hop ballad.

Perhaps it's precisely with "Champion" that Kanye West rediscovers his past, with a gleaming dance-pop sample, while "Everything I Am" is a mirror of what Kanye is now and what he wants to become. He wants to make mass music for the masses, hip-hop music meant for easy listening, and so he can't help but dust off jazz and soul. After all, "Everything I Am" is a musical mood-lifter, unobtrusive, decidedly bearable to anyone's ears, easily decoded, because it lacks those cultural barriers that still keep hip-hop out of reach for everyone.

If with "Late Graduation" one could speak of hip-pop, here the step forward comes from a maturity and depth typical of adult-rock, so we can call it adult hip-pop.

Now let's turn to a few thoughts on the guest spots: Mos Def is the driving force behind "Drunk And Hot Girls". A couple of things about that: Mos Def is better known for his film and TV work than for his records. From his musical career, one recalls with some fondness the split with Talib Kweli on "Black Star". The rest is rightly forgotten. The track itself, though, is a tasty rap-rock number: by that term we don't mean Run DMC-style crossover, but rather a half-rapped, half-sung delivery over a delicate backing track, some jazzy musings, few intrusive beats, and obsessive repetitions of the refrain. It's pure relaxation. The other notable featuring is Chris Martin of Coldplay, by now a (no)global figure, a squeaky-clean symbol of pop music and thus a favorite target for this Kanye West, keen on becoming its new icon. The track is "Homecoming", and Chris Martin throws himself into pure divertissement, improbably rapping himself, offering a male take on something usually entrusted to the fine black voice of the moment. In the distance, echoes of the less festive Caribbean reggae can be heard (a bit Wyclef Jean, to give you an idea).

To wrap up, Kanye West went all out with the single, which will remain etched somewhere in the genre's history. But elsewhere the urge to overdo it sometimes prevails, other times a minimalism that's hard to square with Kanye West the producer, especially since he's proven over time to be one of the finest sound architects in all of hip-hop. Finding him here, on his third album, with beats that are, yes, flawless, but not very orchestral, not very elaborate or complex, is surprising and leaves one somewhat puzzled. We would have expected this from others, not from him. The result is a product of this inconsistency, made even more evident by the inevitable comparison with the previous "Late Registration", which remains his masterpiece. "Graduation" also ranks below his debut "College Dropout" (the first in the trilogy, though there the novelty factor may have played a part).

"Stronger", however, is worth a whole career for any hip-hop rookie, and shouldn't be forgotten. The rest of the album is decent on average, with a few genuinely good tracks. For this reason, "Graduation" earns a solid passing grade, but not undying love.

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26/09/2007