Graduation is released

Why it matters

Graduation came out September 11, 2007, on Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam. It is Kanye West's third album. The album sold 957,000 copies in its first week, the most of any rap album that year. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200. It is the album that closes Kanye's "college trilogy" (College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation) and pivots his catalog toward the more electronic, more synth-heavy, more international sound that would define his later 2000s work. The production roster is more synth-and-arena-rock than the soul-sample of the first two albums. "Stronger," "Good Life" with T-Pain, "Flashing Lights" with Dwele, "Homecoming" with Chris Martin, "Can't Tell Me Nothing." Kanye's writing on Graduation is the most autobiographical-of-self-as-celebrity register he had been working in to that point: songs about fame, the press, his mother ("Drunk and Hot Girls" features Mos Def and is the deep cut). The album sold three million copies in the US and is one of the most genuinely transitional records in his catalog. By the time 808s & Heartbreak came out fourteen months later, Kanye would be a different artist entirely. Graduation is the bridge. You should hear it in sequence.