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Graduation (album): the story on HearLore | HearLore
Common questions
When was the Graduation album by Kanye West released?
The Graduation album by Kanye West was released on the 11th of September 2007. The release date was moved from September 18 to September 11 to coincide with the release of 50 Cent's album Curtis.
How many copies did the Graduation album sell in its first week?
Graduation sold over 957,000 copies in its first week and debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200. By the 3rd of October 2007, the album had sold a total of 1.3 million copies in the United States.
Who designed the cover art for the Graduation album by Kanye West?
Contemporary artist Takashi Murakami designed the cover art for the Graduation album by Kanye West. The artwork features colorful, pastel imagery influenced by Murakami's affiliation with the Superflat art movement and includes the mascot Dropout Bear.
What Grammy Award did the Graduation album by Kanye West win?
The Graduation album by Kanye West won the Grammy Award for Best Rap Album at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards. This win made West the only artist in Grammy history to receive a nomination for Album of the Year from all of his first three studio albums.
How did the Graduation album change the direction of hip-hop music?
The Graduation album by Kanye West changed the direction of hip-hop music by shifting from sample-orientated production to digital synths and drum machines. This synth-driven approach paved the way for new rappers who did not follow the hardcore-gangster mold and encouraged the incorporation of house and electronica elements.
Kanye West stood before a crowd of over 50,000 people at the V Festival in Chelmsford, England, on the 18th of August 2007, and delivered a performance that would fundamentally alter the trajectory of hip-hop. He was not performing the gritty, sample-heavy beats that had defined his previous two albums, The College Dropout and Late Registration. Instead, he was playing anthemic, stadium-ready tracks built on layered electronic synthesizers and house music rhythms. This shift was not accidental but a deliberate strategy born from his experience touring with U2 on their Vertigo Tour the previous year. Watching Bono open stadium shows to massive ovations inspired West to create music that could operate efficiently in large arenas. He began incorporating slower tempos, 1980s influences, and electronic music elements to achieve what he called stadium status. The result was Graduation, an album that marked a departure from the ornate, soul-based sound of his past. West abandoned the extensive use of classic soul samples and instead drew from a far more eclectic range of genres including euro-disco, hard rock, electronica, and krautrock. He modified his rapping style to adopt a dilatory, exuberant flow, emulating Bono's operatic singing by utilizing smoother vowel harmonies and less percussive consonants. This musical evolution was designed to simplify his lyrics and make them more accessible to mass audiences while retaining his signature sonic detail. The album was a conscious decision to move away from the skits and filler tracks that had characterized his earlier work, resulting in a tighter, more cohesive package of 13 tracks. West believed that this new direction took hip-hop in a different direction, proving that an artist could be both a trendsetter and a commercial success without conforming to traditional gangster conventions.
The Sonic Laboratory
The creation of Graduation took place in a series of studios across New York and Los Angeles between 2005 and 2007, but the true laboratory was West's own mind and his relentless pursuit of perfection. He began working on the album immediately after releasing Late Registration, and by late September 2005, he had already completed three songs. West would often listen to songs by folk and country singer-songwriters like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash to augment his wordplay and storytelling abilities. He tested his new songs on his iPod, in his office, in dance clubs, and anywhere people might listen to his music, making adjustments based on feedback. The production process was incredibly meticulous. For the track Stronger, West mixed the song 75 times and worked with eight different audio engineers and eleven different mix engineers around the globe. He recorded over 50 versions of the track, unable to get the kick drum to sound precisely the way he wanted. He even enlisted Timbaland to assist him in redoing the drum programming after hearing the hit single inside a club compared to Timbaland's The Way I Are. The album features guest appearances from artists such as Dwele, T-Pain, Lil Wayne, Mos Def, DJ Premier, and Chris Martin, but West limited himself to just one single guest rap verse on the entire studio album. He chose to record two earthy musical interludes in place of the hip-hop skits, incorporating African sounds and polyrhythmic percussion, though these were omitted from the final release for unknown reasons. Many songs on Graduation contain background vocals provided by Connie Mitchell of the Australian dance music group Sneaky Sound System. West met her bandmates at a diner in Sydney while touring with U2 and asked for musical inspiration. Mitchell later admitted that she previously did not know who West was and never really cared for hip-hop music, but the collaboration changed her views. The album also sees the return of composer and multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion, who had played an integral role as the co-executive producer on Late Registration, for the track Drunk and Hot Girls. West's production style on Graduation involved burying his signature kicks and snares deep beneath the decomposing layers of synths, causing them to sound like voices trapped in a huge machine rather than organic connections to a mythical black-music past. Despite the synthetic attributes, the album retained a sense of multi-layered music with numerous random, semi-audible sounds ranging from keyboard arpeggios to crowd cheers and hard rock guitars.
The release of Graduation on the 11th of September 2007 was not just a musical event but a cultural phenomenon that pitted West against fellow American rapper 50 Cent in a sales competition that would become legendary. The album was released through Def Jam Recordings and Roc-A-Fella Records, and its release date was moved from September 18 to September 11, the same day as 50 Cent's third studio album Curtis. This decision generated much publicity over the idea of a sales competition, resulting in record-breaking sales performances by both albums. West initially expressed indifference towards the thought, saying that when his album and 50 Cent's album dropped, everybody wins because you're going to get a lot of good music at the same time. However, Def Jam president and CEO Jay-Z welcomed the competition, feeling that it would be prosperous for hip-hop, and the date became permanent. On the first day of its release, Graduation sold over 437,000 copies, and the album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling over 957,000 copies in the first week. Curtis sold 691,000 copies in its first week, marking only the second time ever since the inception of Nielsen SoundScan that two albums debuted within the same week with totals surpassing 623,000 copies. The first occurrence of such an event was in September 1991, when Guns N' Roses released Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. The first week sales totals of Graduation and Curtis outsold the first week sales totals of Guns N' Roses' two albums. 50 Cent showed graciousness in regards to his defeat, stating that he was very excited to have participated in one of the biggest album release weeks in the last two years. The outcome of the competition marked the end of the dominance of gangsta rap in mainstream hip-hop. Graduation became West's third consecutive studio album to top the Billboard 200 and also debuted at number-one on the album charts in the United Kingdom and Canada. By the next week, on the 3rd of October 2007, Graduation had sold a total of 1.3 million copies in the US. The album has since sold over 7 million copies in the United States and been certified septuple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The success of Graduation and the outcome of its competition with Curtis paved the way for other hip-hop artists who did not conform to gangster conventions to find commercial acceptance.
The Visual Narrative
The visual identity of Graduation was as meticulously crafted as its sound, featuring cover art designed by contemporary artist Takashi Murakami. The album's artwork expresses colorful, pastel imagery influenced by Murakami's affiliation with Superflat, a post-modern art movement influenced by manga and anime. The visual plotline of the images contained within the liner notes leads up to a graduation ceremony that takes place within a fictional college institution situated within a futuristic metropolis called Universe City. The artwork's storyline centers around Dropout Bear, West's anthropomorphic teddy bear mascot. The story begins on a rainy day with Dropout being awoken by his alarm clock, and after realizing he is running late, runs out of his apartment to his car, modeled after a DeLorean. When the car's engine dies, he is forced to find an alternative means of transportation. Dropout attempts to hail a cab but it speeds right past him, soaking him with puddle water. He then tries to get onto a metro rail but just misses it as it pulls away. Left with no other options, Dropout is reduced to pursuing his goal on foot. As he races down sidewalks, populated by multi-eyed, living mushrooms, Dropout is pursued by a monstrous rain cloud that attempts to swallow him whole. Eventually, Dropout Bear arrives at the university and makes it to his ceremony just in time to stand before his colleagues, a wide variety of anthropomorphic creatures like himself. The visual story concludes with Dropout Bear being shot out of a cannon from the university into the sky into another stratosphere on the back cover. The cover art for Graduation was cited as the fifth best album cover of the year by Rolling Stone. Murakami later reproduced the artwork designs through the use of cel-shaded animation within a three-minute animated music video for the opening track Good Morning. After collaborating with West on the artwork and video, Murakami later worked with him on the cover art for West and Kid Cudi's 2018 collaborative album Kids See Ghosts. The artwork expresses an ambivalent outlook on his newfound fame and media scrutiny alongside providing inspirational messages of triumph directed at listeners. The visual narrative complements the musical progression of the album, which prematurely concludes the education theme of West's first two studio albums, The College Dropout and Late Registration.
The Critical Consensus
Graduation was met with widespread acclaim from music critics who praised the production and the album's ability to appeal to diverse music audiences. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional critics, the album received an average score of 79, based on 32 reviews. Reviewing for Spin in November 2007, Charles Aaron hailed Graduation as mesmerizing and alienating, like all the purest forms of pop culture, with music in the tradition of Puff Daddy's late 1990s pop-rap, but more skilled. Pitchfork critic Mark Pytlik complimented the accessibility of West's sonic experimentations, finding it impressive and innovative how he assembled seemingly disparate elements on the songs. Greg Tate, writing in The Village Voice, dubbed him the most genuinely confessional MC in hip-hop today and said that bouts of narcissism aside, Graduation contains killer pieces of production. Stylus Magazine's Jayson Greene said it serves as a document of West's maturation and, musically, at least, it's the most accomplished thing he's ever done. In Rolling Stone, Nathan Brackett wrote of West's evolving and increasingly experimental, genre-bending production and said although he lacks Jay-Z's formal mastery, West has grown as a writer. Josh Tyrangiel from Time wrote that West plunders the best samples and meticulously layers every track with enough surprises that there are thrills and discoveries a dozen listens in. The album was named to year-end lists for 2007 by multiple publications. USA Today ranked it as the best album of the year, with the staff lauding the musical and thematic variety as well as its articulate and witty rhyming. The album was picked by readers of Entertainment Weekly as the best of 2007, receiving 41 percent of the votes on the magazine's year-end poll. Graduation was listed by Amazon, My List Pad, and PopMatters as the third best album of the year, while it was also selected as one of 2007's top five albums by Blender, LAS Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Spin. The album was voted in at number six on The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop poll of the year, receiving 91 mentions. On the Idolator poll for 2007, which surveyed 452 critics, Graduation was ranked at number eight. Graduation later appeared on numerous other best albums lists. Pitchfork listed the album at number 87 on their ranking of the best albums of the 2000s, and Complex placed it at number 2 on their list. Rolling Stone listed Graduation at number 45, and it finished second on its readers list. Complex ranked the album at number one on their list of the 100 Best Albums of the Complex Decade. Graduation was later included on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list, landing at 204 on the 2020 update. It also appeared at 470 on NME's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time 2013 list.
The Awards and Legacy
Graduation earned West his third Grammy Award for Best Rap Album and his third Album of the Year nomination, making him the only artist in Grammy history to receive a nomination for the award from all of their first three studio albums. The album won the award of Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Album at the American Music Awards of 2008, while also counting towards West earning the award for Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Artist. West told the crowd during his acceptance speech that despite winning the Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Album award, he wanted to give the award to Lil Wayne instead. At the 50th Annual Grammy Awards, Graduation won the award for Best Rap Album, becoming West's third consecutive album to do so. The album was also nominated for Album of the Year at the ceremony, making West the only artist in Grammy history to receive a nomination for the award from all of their first three studio albums. West claimed in an interview that he felt confident towards Graduation winning the award. The album was considered the favorite to win Album of the Year, and its failure to win was considered by many publications to be a snub. At the same ceremony, Stronger and Good Life were awarded Best Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Song, respectively. The latter also received a nomination for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration, while Can't Tell Me Nothing was nominated for Best Rap Song. The six awards that the album led to West contending for at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards were among his total of eight nominations for the ceremony, making West the most nominated music artist of that show. The critical reception and commercial success of Graduation left a profound influence on both hip-hop culture and popular music. West has earned praise for his ability to appeal to diverse music audiences such as indie-rock listeners and rave enthusiasts without alienating his core hip-hop audiences. Collaborative tracks such as Homecoming signaled the diversification of mainstream hip-hop and its intertwining with the genres of alternative and indie-rock in subsequent years. In addition, songs such as Everything I Am have been cited as the best example of the soulful and introspective atmosphere that came to dominate the rap world, from Drake to The Weeknd. Irish rock band U2 has imparted that touring with West on their Vertigo Tour in turn had a significant effect on their own music as well in regards to the band's twelfth studio album No Line on the Horizon. Lead singer Bono elaborated that West's rapping inspired him to utilize more percussive consonants for his songwriting and vocal performance. West's third studio album, particularly with its two hit singles Stronger and Flashing Lights, has been attributed to not only encouraging other hip-hop artists to incorporate house and electronica elements into their music, but also for playing a role in the revival of disco and electro-infused club music in the late-2000s. Flashing Lights was a leading part of a wave of synthesizer-driven music which combined danceable electro beats with an accessible pop format. It was succeeded by the high chart placings and multi-platinum sales of singles by artists and bands ranging from Just Dance by singer Lady Gaga to Right Round by rapper Flo Rida. Graduation marked a musical progression towards synth-based production in regards to the art of crafting hip-hop beats. The studio album demonstrated West's shift from sample-orientated hip-hop production and more towards digital synths and drum machines generated by digital audio workstations. While samples are present throughout the album, they were fewer in number and not nearly as prominent. As hip-hop producer Anthony Kilhoffer recalled to Billboard in 2017 for Graduation's 10th anniversary, I think it was the first time having a heavy hand in the use of electronic music in hip-hop. Previous to that it was very R&B influenced, tracks like Stronger and Flashing Lights contained very electronic type of elements. This was way before EDM became mainstream, and marked the end of the jersey-wearing era in hip-hop. Since Graduation's release, countless other record producers have followed suit in blurring the lines of conventional hip-hop with the incorporation of electronic production. This synth-driven production approach has since been adopted by artists including Future, Young Chop, and Metro Boomin. The outcome of the highly publicized sales competition between 50 Cent's Curtis and West's Graduation has been accredited to the commercial decline of the gangsta rap that once dominated mainstream hip-hop. Ben Detrick of XXL cites West beating 50 cent in sales as being responsible for altering the direction of hip-hop and paving the way for new rappers who did not follow the hardcore-gangster mold, writing, If there was ever a watershed moment to indicate hip-hop's changing direction, it may have come when 50 Cent competed with Kanye in 2007 to see whose album would claim superior sales. Kanye led a wave of new artists, Kid Cudi, Wale, Lupe Fiasco, Kidz in the Hall, Drake, who lacked the interest or ability to create narratives about any past gunplay or drug-dealing.