Kanye West’s Graduation Turns Five, But How Has It Held Up?

September 11th will forever be an important day in hip-hop. 11 years ago today Jay-Z released arguably his best album ever, The Blueprint, and sold 420,000 copies in its first week, despite the attacks on New York City. Fabolous released his debut album, Ghetto Fabolous, on the same day, but that one’s usually met with crickets (hey, I liked it). But that was 2001.

A few years later, the date would again be significant — this time because of an epic sales battle dreamed up in the boardrooms of Def Jam and Interscope Records. Who was going to be the new face of hip-hop? Was it the aggressive content of Curtis Jackson, whose third album Curtis was poised to set the world on fire, or was it Kanye West, who was also pushing his third album, Graduation? Kanye was looked at as the good guy with the squeaky clean image, while 50 was the bad guy in black. It was an epic battle of good versus evil. But you know how this movie ends — with Yeezy bringing the title back to Chicago. Graduation outsold Curtis by almost 300,000 copies. A blowout victory.

Kanye almost did a millie in his first week — 957,000 to be exact. But was that due to the hype of the sales battle, or was the album a true blue classic? Many wanted to see 50 Cent, the reigning bully and sales king of rap fail and fall flat on his face. So was the public buying the shit out of Kanye’s album to spite 50, or did they really love Kanye?

In this writers opinion, Graduation is Kanye’s second best album. The College Dropout holds a special place in my heart and will always remain at the top spot, but Graduation almost gave me that same feeling. Almost. Graduation was Kanye graduating from being an everyman rapper to becoming a full fledged global superstar — and he hasn’t looked back since. He’s only continued to rise and spread his gospel, whether you love or hate him. On Graduation he had a new look and sound. Sonically the album was a departure from the sped up soul samples that littered his first two albums, landing more on the electronic side of the fence. It was bigger and deffer.

The features were different, too; they had more of a pop appeal than some of those of his previous two efforts. Gone were (most) of the underground rappers, and present were radio noisemakers like T-Pain and Lil Wayne. The tracks were personal, and though Yeezy’d always worn his heart on his sleeve, he went all the way in on tracks like “Big Brother” and “Everything I Am.” While none of the singles matched the success of “Gold Digger,” he did kill the charts, the clubs and the radio with records like “Flashing Lights” and “Good Life.” And it’s arguable that Kanye’s greatest song ever is “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” Complex seemed to think so.

So has the project held up over these past five years, or was it just a flash in the pan? Something that was dope then, but weak five years later? Was it an “instant classic” as many of us on the internets like to crown mixtapes that are here today and gone tomorrow? I’d have to say that it’s actually gotten better with time. It’s something that can be played front to back with no skips — even “Drunk & Hot Girls” gets burn from this kid. Sure, we can all argue about our favorite Yeezy albums, but I don’t think anything is really messing with Graduation, and I’ll be singing the same tune five years from now. Feel free to speak your mind below.

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