15 Years Later, A Graduation Retrospective

Revisiting the good, the bad, and the ugly from Kanye West’s third studio album.

By Noah Weinberg

Graduation, Kanye West’s most monumental and commercially successful album, recently celebrated its fifteenth birthday. My god, does 2007 feel like an eternity ago. Gas was $2.80 a gallon, No Country for Old Men was on its way to winning Best Picture at the Oscars, and Dick Cheney was still our Vice President. Unsurprisingly, Kanye West was in a drastically different place in 2007 than he is today. Mr. West had just opened arena concerts for goliath rock bands U2 and The Rolling Stones. Kanye quickly realized on those tours that his complex and carefully calculated rhymes couldn’t captivate a stadium full of people. So with his third studio album, Kanye sought to become a bonafide superstar. Gone were the historic soul samples and intricate flow patterns, and in came synth-heavy production and more simplified rhyme schemes. Let’s look back at what holds up and what feels excruciatingly dated from Kanye’s quintuple-platinum-selling album, Graduation. 

What Works on Graduation:

Fortunately, there’s a lot that still works on Graduation. For the most part, Graduation’s production feels as magnificent as it did in 2007. Kanye’s departure from the soul samples of The College Dropout and the increased orchestration on Late Registration made way for the atmospheric electronic soundscape of Graduation. On “Champion,” Kanye’s non-stop braggadocious rapping over a sample of Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne” comes dangerously close to being stale and bland, but the track’s triumphant trumpets and synths, combined with Kanye’s famished delivery, make this song anything but boring. 

“I Wonder” arguably feels grander and more anthemic in 2022. Between the luxurious synth and string sections, a gorgeous sample flip of Labi Siffre’s “My Song,” and Kanye’s skeletal yet purposeful rhyming, this song undoubtedly deserves a high spot up the Kanye West totem pole. Another standout on the tracklist is “Flashing Lights,” a blissful futuristic piece of synth-pop complete with manipulated vocals and string-led production. Described by Kanye as the “coolest” song on the album, “Flashing Lights’”  effortlessly catchy chorus (sung by Dwele) makes way for a perfectly executed pop-rap hit. 

Another standout can be found on the album’s lead single, “Can’t Tell Me Nothing.” This Jeezy-assisted smash remains an unquestionably iconic Kanye West anthem for its bravado, ear-wormy sample, and unforgettable one-liners. In addition, the opening lines of Kanye’s first verse are some of the most well-known in the entire genre: 

“I had a dream I could buy my way to Heaven/When I awoke, I spent that on a necklace/I told God I'd be back in a second/Man, it's so hard not to act reckless.” 

This easy-to-rap, simplistic lyricism and flow helped catapult Kanye from regular rap star to world-famous superstar. On his first two albums, Kanye had to prove to the rap game that he was a more than capable wordsmith. Once he succeeded in his goal, Kanye set his sights on a new aspiration, to reach the largest number of people possible. To achieve this lofty objective, Kanye needed sharp, concise, and sing-songy one-liners, and boy, does Kanye knock those one-liners out of the park. A line like “cause who the kids gonna listen to, huh?/I guess me if it isn’t you,” still rings true regarding Kanye’s cultural influence over the youth. While an elementary (and grammatically incorrect) bar like “some people graduate but be still stupid” remains something that only 2007-era Kanye would deliver. 

For an unabashed first attempt at a pop-rap album, Kanye succeeded with flying colors and in turn, delivered his third straight classic project, but that doesn’t mean that Graduation is perfect; in fact, there are several shortcomings on Mr. West’s most celebrated record. 

What Does Not Work on Graduation:

Hot take alert: “Stronger” is a relatively mid-Kanye West song. Now I know it’s not a popular opinion to bash a Kanye song with over one billion Spotify streams, but hear me out. While the now-iconic Daft Punk sample was seen as revolutionary in 2007, the altered electronic vocal line now appears very dated and slightly cringy. The heavily processed “harder, better, faster, stronger” sample harshly hits the ear with little melody.  Kanye’s flow and lyricism are adequate at best, and most importantly, this hit single is too damn long. Sitting at over five minutes, “Stronger’s” staggeringly lengthy electronic outro is a slog to get through. This isn’t to say that “Stronger” wasn’t a fantastic banger for the mid-2000s; it was, but upon returning to Graduation in 2022, “Stronger” simply doesn’t have the staying power of some of Graduation’s more impressive songs, like “Flashing Lights” or “Homecoming.”

There is an additional, slightly more apparent dud on the Graduation tracklist, which belongs to track number eight, “Drunk and Hot Girls.” I seriously do not know how this song ever got released, nor do I understand why Kanye created this dumpster fire in the first place. This instrumental is an unmitigated disaster with its violent violin stabs and poorly executed video game-inspired synths. Kanye’s rapping is just as horrific, as he articulates his frustrations with very drunk, yet very attractive women. It’s a song that wouldn’t fly in 2022, and with good reason. To put it bluntly, there isn’t a single redeeming quality to the song. 

My final gripe with Graduation has to deal with the album’s sequencing. One of Kanye’s greatest strengths on this album is that each song sounds incredibly distinctive and unique. No two songs on Graduation sound alike. For example, the regal energy of “I Wonder” couldn’t contrast more with the autotuned swagger of the album’s next track, “Good Life.”  This makes for a memorable listening experience, as each song stands completely on its own. However, the downside to this type of album experience is that Graduation lacks any sort of musical cohesion. Rather than appearing as one carefully crafted body of work, Graduation’s thirteen songs feel like thirteen haphazardly placed attempts at a hit single.  The final five songs on the record, “Flashing Lights,” “Everything I Am,” “The Glory,” “Homecoming,” and “Big Brother,” go from deliriously euphoric to uncontrollably sentimental within the blink of an eye. This can leave the listener (like myself) feeling drained from such an emotional rollercoaster. It’s not necessarily bad that Graduation’s tracklist is erratic and all over the place. I mean, Kanye West is a fairly erratic individual. But in terms of a seamless and cohesive album listening experience, Graduation does fall a bit flat. 

Conclusion:

Fifteen years later, it’s safe to say that Graduation still makes for a fantastic, albeit slightly blemished, listen. The highs of Graduation remain some of Kanye’s best. Tracks like “Champion,” “I Wonder,” “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” “Flashing Lights,” “Everything I Am,” and “Homecoming” sound just as exquisite a decade and a half later. But songs like “Stronger,” “Barry Bonds,” and “Drunk and Hot Girls” can be a brutal struggle to get through. That doesn’t mean Graduation isn’t a historic piece in hip-hop history, though. The album is an undeniable classic in the genre and is the project that launched Kanye West into the superstar stratosphere. Not to mention, by beating 50 Cent’s Curtis in first-week album sales, a strong argument can be made that Graduation delivered the final blow to the dying gangsta rap subgenre. Regardless of your thoughts on Kanye West’s polarizing nature, it’s safe to say that Graduation is an already iconic piece of contemporary 21st-century music, built to last in the modern American zeitgeist for at least another fifteen years.