kanye west

A man that people love to hate, but can't help but respect, Kanye West has long polarized audiences with his outlandish ego. While his work on near-masterpieces The College Dropout and Late Registration allowed fans to forgive his personal shortcomings, Graduation falls short, showcasing several key musical weaknesses once easy to overlook, but now impossible to ignore.

Kanye has always been overly reliant on samples, a flaw which he readily showcases on Graduation's first three tracks, drawing from sources as disparate as Steely Dan and Daft Punk. Tracks such as "Stronger," while solid, would benefit from more original production rather than simply playing another band's song in the background.

Not Surprisingly, when Kanye integrates more of his own material the results are often some of the year's best hip-hop. "Flashing Lights" features swirling synths over a beat that literally sounds like its title. "Good Life," which features a surprisingly unrobotic T-Pain, is another synth-heavy track that makes a perfect upbeat companion piece to J.T.'s "Summer Love." And enough can't be said of the sinister single, "Can't Tell Me Nothin," with its perfectly placed vocal samples and singsong chorus.

But Graduation's biggest flaw is how downright lazy, uninspired and dissonant Kanye's rapping can occasionally be. While his delivery is never boring, his tendency to force rhymes is embarrassing. On top of that, he continues his unremarkable rapping over the same old topics-Louis V, black cards, his almost creepy obsession with sex. Where's the Kanye that delivered the passionate "Jesus Walks?" Instead, we get a track called "Drunk and Hot Girls" which is just as terrible as it sounds.

The Kanye of old is nowhere to be found until the album-closer "Big Brother." On the track, it seems like Kanye finally found a subject worth taking the time to write about-his mentor and idol, Jay-Z. What results is his best set of lyrics on the album, if not ever. When he raps, "Sibling rivalry, only I could see/It was the pride in me that was driving me," you only wish he would direct a similar level of focus to his lyrics on the album's other twelve tracks.

At one point on Graduation, Kanye claims that he's "doing pretty good as far as geniuses go." Kanye needs to realize that with such a bold declaration comes the responsibility to avoid mediocrity at all costs, a requirement that Graduation just barely fulfills.