kanye west graduation

i realize that ethaneveryone will call me gay, but its true

http://www.falcom.com/licence/character/image/ys_logo.jpg

deadanimalhat.jpg

i also thought ys was an abbreviation but 4 fear of a clowning i didn't ask
can't enjoy ys sober, personally.

i'm often pleased by deadanimalhat.jpeg

i wonder how much he paid Takashi Murakami for the sleeve? he doesn't come cheap.

ha ha

Oh well.

Kanye's album outsells 50 Cent's by 200,000 on day one
September 12, 2007 04:59pm

50 Cent said he'd hang up his mic if Kanye West's new album outsold his. He might have spoken too soon.

Critics are raving about West's Graduation - and its already sold 200,000 more units than Fiddy's Curtis since yesterday's same-day release in the US.

The hip-hop egomaniacs were pitted against each other when, last month, Fiddy said on <i>sohh.com: </i>

"If Kanye West sells more records than 50 Cent on September 11, I'll no longer (perform) music. I'll write music and work with my other artists but I won't put out any more solo albums."

Associated Press said on the strength of the albums, West could claim a "landslide victory."

"... Graduation still sound like a logical step forward. Yet Curtis sounds like Fiddy is standing in place ... Fiddy's outsized cockiness sounds like a comfortable artist repeating himself, afraid to tinker with his winning formulas."

Ryan Dombal, from Pitchfork, gave Fiddy just 4.9 stars out of 10.

"in direct opposition to Kanye's fearless, risk-taking, Graduation, 50's new album is a blatant rehash - a bottom-line sequel that insults the same audience it mildlessly panders to."

Respected sie HiphopDX said: "50 cent may be a superstar, but Curtis is pedestrian."

But critics heaped praise on West's Graduation.

Rolling Stone gave the album 4.5 stars out of five, saying: "This is an album that you first like, then love."

HiphopDX echoed the sentiment.

"Kanye has created another must-have album that will continuously bump on your CD players and mp3's for months to come."

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,22406293-10388,00.html

sweet jesus the ass on the girl in the good life vid

lol @ the good life video ripping off the cartoony letters from the d.a.n.c.e. video

-- Jordan Sargent, Wednesday, 12 September 2007 03:41 (9 hours ago) Link

is it still 'ripping off' if it's the same director?

rtc OTM re: ass

idve preferred a more logical boob tho, wtf

haha has it really been 39 minutes

this pretty enjoyable for a victory lap album

It helps that the victory laps are a lot shorter this time.

Yeah, this still has some fat on it, but I really didn't need another excessive Kanye-athon.

I thought Late Registration was the more-enjoyable-than-it-had-a-right-to-be victory lap album. This one, I think, is too short. I'm tired of all these big deal rap albums that are 13 songs, 4-5 of which were advance singles/leaks. Graduation has the same amount of filler/bad idea tracks as the last album, just fewer solid songs and obvious highlights to balance it out.

I admire how Kanye's become like Madonna: he collaborate with a hot producer, then discards him after he's learned all his tricks. "Everything I Am," "Homecoming," and "Good Life" are so much denser than anything on LR.

I don't get how people sit through 80-min monstrosities, esp. ones by people whose obnoxious tendencies become exacerbated as they outstay their welcome. (That said, I love The College Dropout even as I would like to take an ax to portions of it. Late Registration doesn't have enough good material to build a 40-minute album, let alone a disc-filler.

) <--- close parenthesis

I don't get how people get so intimidated by the thought of paying for 80 minutes of music when they can so easily pick and choose the songs they like or break it up into multiple listening sessions. I'm just saying, I think fewer songs more often than not merely gives the impression of higher quality control, and I'd rather get my money's worth and get a bunch of new songs and make up my mind about which ones I like than pay all that money for maybe 8 songs I haven't heard on the radio already.

^^^OTM

even when albums are 10 tracks long i rarely have the time to sit and listen to the whole album front to back. If I do, I've probably also got time to listen to another five tracks

I suppose I should just start a thread for the Great Rap Album Length Debate already since I seem to have this argument a couple times a year, but I really hate this shrinking album trend. Hey Swizz Beatz, you made 80 billion songs this year, but when I pay cash money for your album, all you've got are 10 songs, a remix, and a voicemail from Snoop Dogg? Fuck you!

but WHAT A VOICEMAIL!

I dunno, I still hold on to notions that albums should be listened to front to back in one sitting, and the idea of correlating value to amount of music is just entirely foreign to me for whatever reasons. I never really want to listen to any one person for more than an hour at a time or so. I find myself never even listening to long albums more than once or twice a lot of times, even when I like a certain number of songs on them.

I guess I find long albums intimidating.

Honestly, Reverend, I feel pretty much the same way. I tend to listen to albums in one sitting and do get impatient with longer ones. With rock and underground rap, I generally prefer shorter albums. I just feel differently with mainstream rap/pop records where half the songs are put out for media saturation beforehand and there's a lot less to discover or hear with fresh ears on the album itself.

'd rather get my money's worth and get a bunch of new songs and make up my mind about which ones I like than pay all that money for maybe 8 songs I haven't heard on the radio already.

Capitalist!

Seriously, if I had to pick and choose from 80 minutes worth of music, chances are that it's not a good album! You don't discard tracks from good albums.

Yeah, I can understand that, but I've gotten a bit lazy about searching stuff out early, like in this case I'd only heard "Stronger" and "Can't Tell Me Nothing" beforehand. (xp)

the thread al wants to start is less about "album length" and more about what an "album" is, i think--because isn't it going to come down to ppl who hold the view that albums are in their entirety statements or works of art that should be listened to from front to back vs. ppl who hold the view that buying an album is like buying 12-18 songs and sequencing is a secondary concern if one at all

I should say that for me, 8 songs I haven't heard already is more or less ideal.

max otm

i mean obv those are extreme positions and most of us probably fall in the middle somewhere but that seems to be the sense i get

The funny thing is I'm not even a pick & choose/discard songs type at all, although I'm making a devil's-advocate argument from that perspective to an extent. My deal is more that I want to listen to it all the way through, but I'd rather listen to a long and inconsistent record and be like "OK, there was some bad stuff, but plenty of good stuff too," than listen to a short and inconsistent record and at the end feel like "that's it? that's all? Van Damme!" And really the argument is only really pertinent here because Kanye is pretty inconsistent by nature and so those are the only 2 options.

plus some of us are trying to fit things on cassettes, people

I don't have the fucking time to turn every single rap album I get in 2007 into a best-of mixtape.

I know kids no longer think of albums as sequences of great songs, but as a critic I listen to too much music to waste time on dud songs: the more songs I skip on a second listen, the less apt I am to give the album props.

lots of songs i skip on first listen end up being the best ones

^^^^^otm

i think it has a lot to do with how we listen to music, too. most of my CD/album listening is done in the car and i dont mind long albums because every time i start my car it picks up in the place where it left off--im not starting from track 1 and missing track 18 every time.

what about when u were all pruning yr fantasy ugk albums last month, still repping filler then?

I think a 29-track behemoth that is easily one of the best/replayable albums of the year might be an exception to the rule, whereas trimming the fat from this new Kia Shine album is something I would wish on no man.

i do think skits should be banned

I tend not to mind double albums so much because I just end up listening to each disc separately rather than trying to force it all in one go. That said, Underground Kingz is remarkably consistent for an album of its length and the only thing I'd remove are the crunk tracks.

max otm again

You'd leave the Jazze Pha?

xpost yeah rap double albums tend to be way more consistently listenable than rock double albums, probably because rap albums have more guests and more varied production aesthetics (or at least, they tend to, certainly over 2 cds)

I love skits when they come on an album, but hate them when they come up in shuffle.

I couldn't imagining listen to Doc's Da Name without "Pain In The Ass Stewardess" leading into Da Goodness

Or "This ain't no motherfuckin P" on Master P's Ghetto D. Classick.

There's a really funny skit on the Baby Boy Da Prince album.

dude seriously i dont think i ever listen to any record straight thru, even tracks i love - its usually a diff config every time

xp that skit is just the intro to make em say ungh not its own track

THIS RAPPIN 4TAY, WHOS THIS

rap double albums tend to be way more consistently listenable than rock double albums

maybe because the only rock 2cd in recent memory is Stadium Arcadium.