Good Morning! Class is in session! On this day in Hip Hop history, Kanye West released his third album, “Graduation”, on Roc-A-Fella Records, in 2007. The Grammy Award winning “Graduation” went multi-platinum and to the top of the charts. “Graduation’s” title continued West’s education theme of his two previous efforts, “The College Dropout” and “Late Registration”. Inspired by U2, Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones, West wanted to make an album that would stand the test of time, more than his previous two releases, and one day be considered a classic. One of the elements he used to achieve this was to expand musically. “Graduation”, although hip-hop at its core, merged snippets of electronica, rock, lounge music, prog-rock, reggae, dub, pop and synth-pop. West also incorporated more live instrumentation in addition to sampling on “Graduation” as well. “Graduation” spawned the hit singles, “Good Life”, featuring T-Pain, “Flashing Lights”, featuring Dwele, “Homecoming”, featuring Chris Martin of Coldplay, “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and the monster smash “Stronger”. Other guests on “Graduation included, Mos Def, DJ Premier, Lil’ Wayne, Jay-Z, Ne-Yo, John Legend and Connie Mitchell of Sneaky Sound System. West would produce “Graduation” along with Mike Dean, DJ Toomp, Nottz, Warryn Campbell and others. The album’s cover was designed by Japanese contemporary “superflat” artist Takashi Murakami. “Graduation” would be the first of West’s more introspective albums that he would release.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 13:30:25 +0000
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