#Draw kanye west graduation album series#

Though the academy did not disclose who might be performing on the broadcast, critics expect it to use the 50th anniversary as a rationale to enlist any number of high-wattage past Grammy stars.

#Draw kanye west graduation album series#

Grammy organizers already have undertaken an effort to create a historic feel for the event, including the broadcast of a two-hour special on CBS last week, вЂњMy Night at the Grammys,вЂќ spotlighting past performances, and the creation of a seven-CD series collecting Grammy-winning songs from the major genre fields. With sterling quality to match its massive advance hype, The College Dropout is one of those wonderful crossover albums that appeal to a huge audience without sacrificing a shred of integrity.The nominations came as the eventвЂ™s organizer, the National Academy of Recordings Arts and Sciences, is aiming to add weight to the ceremony, which over the years has come under fire for hewing too closely to the music industryвЂ™s commercial priorities. That tendency is more than offset, however, by music unafraid of raw emotion and tracks that are both personal and strangely universal. Lif jealous, but like a lot of great concept albums before it, The College Dropout is burdened by skits and jibber-jabbering-especially the audio autobiography West delivers on the marathon final track-that add unnecessarily to the disc's running time. The disc boasts enough conceptual ambition to make Mr. But more importantly, he raps vividly and empathetically about being poor like The Coup, takes it to the church like Lifesavas, and discourses eloquently on racism, morality, and societal inequity like Black Star. West raps about jewelry and cars like Jay-Z (who appears on the album, along with Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Ludacris, and Common). Now that he has hip-hop's undivided attention, West seems intent on injecting it with elements far more dangerous, provocative, and rare than the murder, debauchery, and drug use found on many multi-platinum rap albums: The College Dropout instead turns on substance, social commentary, righteous anger, ornery humanism, dark humor, and even Christianity.

'Through The Wire' transformed attitudes toward West's career shift from 'Kanye West raps?' to 'Kanye West raps!' He aims high with his lush, substantial, and enormously rewarding The College Dropout, an ambitious concept album that uses West's departure from college as a symbol for his disillusionment with society.

West has long since established himself as a hyper-soulful A-list producer whose rГ©sumГ© is filled with rap's biggest and/or best. A backpacker answer to Bushwick Bill's eerie 'Ever So Clear,' 'Through The Wire' captures and builds on an emotion as wonderful as it is rare: rapturous joy at simply being alive. This year, all eyes are on Chicago's Kanye West, thanks to a string of brilliant production hits and his single 'Through The Wire,' a transcendent account of the car crash that broke his jaw and threatened his life and career. Last year, 50 Cent, OutKast, and Jay-Z all occupied that enviable but precarious position, with releases that doubled as full-fledged pop-culture events.

Once in a while, the sum of hip-hop seems to slow down in anticipation of some buzzed-to-the-heavens release whose content promises to make the blind see, the deaf hear, and 2Pac walk again.