Music

Sharing as it does a release date with one50 Cent’s ‘Curtis’, this review of Kanye West’s third album should really be a frontline report from what many – well all right, mainly American teenagers – are calling ‘The Biggest Hip Hop Chart Battle Ever!’ At the time of writing though, even Fiddy’s UK label is waiting to hear his client’s latest, so by default Time Out is forced to declare the winner of this clash of the titans to be… the man who actually let us hear his album, albeit just the once… Kanye West!

Handily, it’s hardly tricky to guess what ‘Curtis’ will sound like, and the final part in Kanye’s education-themed trilogy, too, turns out not to demand particularly close scrutiny. His beats are bigger, but West’s ‘signature’ (read: ‘now getting a bit repetitive’) sample-heavy production sound still dominates, with Wacko Jacko’s  ‘PYT’ (on ‘Good Life’), Steely Dan (future hit ‘Champion’), Daft Punk (single ‘Stronger’) and the obligatory snippets of obscure soul (both ‘I Wonder’ and ‘The Glory’) all being plundered to good effect. Lyrically meanwhile, his own aceness gets mentioned more than once, as does Chicago (see the Chris Martin-featuring ‘Homecoming’), as do groupies, on the charmingly titled ‘Drunk And Hot Girls’. There’s an homage to Jay-Z in epic closer ‘Big Brother’, but what’s more interesting than all of this is the constant, underlying sense of self-reassurance – West is patently not as convinced of his own greatness as he would have us believe – and paranoia brought on by stardom. ‘People talk so much shit about me at barber shops/ They forget to get they haircut,’ he spits, quite amusingly, on the DJ Premier-featuring ‘Everything I Am’.

‘Graduation’, then, stripped of all the cartoonish self-aggrandising, is merely another solid Kanye West album.  ‘I’m doing pretty good as geniuses go!’ he spits on ‘Barry Bonds’. Yes Kanye, you are: but by your own standards – nevermind anyone else’s – is ‘pretty good’ anywhere near enough?