Graduation Review

This is where he stopped making rap records for rap listeners and started making them for football stadiums. The samples come from prog and krautrock and French house rather than 1970s soul, the drums get bigger and slower, and every song is built around a shape sixty thousand people can follow. Stronger is the obvious case, a robot vocal loop hammered into a chant, and Flashing Lights is the better one, a synth bassline, a string pad and almost no rapping at all.

Good Life and Can't Tell Me Nothing are as effortless as he ever sounded. The writing is the weak leg. There is real feeling in Big Brother and Everything I Am, but a lot of this album is confidence about confidence, and the punchlines get lazier as the choruses get bigger. None of that matters much while the thing is playing. Rap's centre of gravity moved to meet this record and never fully moved back.