“Graduation” 10 years later

“Graduation”, of course, was not the first loud disc in Kanye’s discography. By 2007, the West had the hands of a full-fledged mainstream artist, who wasn’t playing a gangsta authenticity card and telling more close and comprehensible stories to a wide white audience with humor and to think about college, American materialism, faith, love and family. Which, of course, was not an absolute novelty (before Kanye, ATCQ and Outkast, for example, were engaged in such things), but considerably refreshed the hip-hop story space of that time. Continue reading →