Kanye West, Graduation

From: Ryan Dombal
To: Jon Dolan

I can hear the bitching now: "Kanye's changed!" and "He's lost his damn mind!" and "Where did he find those damn sunglasses?" Sure Kanye circa 2007 is a far cry from Kanye circa 2004. He's famous now. He likes Daft Punk. He wears hooded space suits. When he originally rapped, "I'ma get on this TV mama/I'ma, I'ma break shit down," on his debut album, the line was aspirational — a dropout trying his damndest to convince his professor mom he didn't throw his life away by aiming for hip-hop superstardom. On Graduation, he brings the line back on "Good Life." The context is different. With Kanye's TV dreams realized a million times over, he's now sitting back, smiling: When T-Pain sings, "I'ma get on this TV mama/I'ma put shit down," it now sounds like a good-natured "I told you so." Without his automatic underdog sympathy going for him, Kanye falls into the rich-rapper trap at times on Graduation.

But even on a whiny track like "Can't Tell Me Nothing," Kanye's still Kanye: referencing The Cosby Show and using Biblical allusions to describe his over-the-top attire with a straight face. He even tries to bring his TV stardom down to earth on "Nothing" — "I'm on TV talking like it's just you and me." With Graduation, Kanye is living in a different world — both musically and lyrically — but his internal conflicts, sonic adventurousness and shameless self-absorption remain intact; he's not as cuddly as before, but he's still an asshole with a beating heart.

From: Jon Dolan
To: Ryan Dombal

His arrogance is shameless, but I'm not sure his self-absorption is. There's still enough moral contradiction in this music — especially in the music itself, which undercuts the parodic money-power self-pumping with sad soul noise in certain spots — to make this guy compelling, even as his arrogance becomes almost psychedelic. (Sampling Steely Dan's "Kid Charlemagne," a song about '60s acid tech Owsley Stanley, in a song about how surreally cocky you are is pretty funny.) I like how on "Big Brother" his fiercely ambivalent Jay-Z fan letter, he's both fan and friend, which is a nice place to end a trilogy of records about finding yourself not just as famous but also as arrogant as the people whose fame and arrogance used to seem not just astronomically beyond your reach but also patently inane. He often seems to wonder, à la one of my favorite lyrics ever about money, why must I live this way?

I like that he isn't sure what he's graduating to — "Good-bye to NAACP Award/Good-bye to the India.Arie Award/They'd rather give me the Nigga Please Award" says a lot coming from the pop artist whose George Bush screed will probably go down as the most high-profile, genuinely risky political statement by a major artist since John Lennon. It's like he wants to beat the world to the punch by giving himself less than he deserves. As for the sonic weirdness (what, no beats by Peter, Bjorn and John?), I saw it referred to as "hipster brownnosing," a funny idea and one that seems to assume all artistic moves are always about marketing. His sure are. But I don't think he wants Jonathan Safran Foer readers and Bonnie "Prince" Billy fans on Team West. He's asking of his millions of minions, "If I throw a block party in a cul-de-sac at the end of Screwball Lane, will any of you show up?" I like that. I love the Can sample on "Drunk and Hot Girls," because on the original ("Sing Swan Song," from 1972's Ege Bamyasi) vocalist Damo Suzuki really sounds like he's singing, "Drunk and hot girls." I like the idea of a Nietzschean French techno song. I like that his Chris Martin song is just as horrible as Jay-Z's, if distinctions can be made at this level of awfulness. I like that he's still a mess.

From: Ryan Dombal
To: Jon Dolan

Right, I definitely think his use of Daft Punk and Can (and starting the record off with a beat so on-the-low it could be a DJ Shadow interlude) isn't pandering to the tight T-shirt set as much as it's a challenge to himself. In fact, Kanye's unwavering solipsism might be more a reflection of blog culture than Graduation's nerdy samples. Something like "Drunk and Hot Girls" might be meandering, too long and not clever enough to merit its place on the record ... It might be a mistake. But it's a notable mistake — a song called "Drunk and Hot Girls" about the pitfalls of a life filled with inebriated ditzes (random pukings, emotional vacuousness, slurry speech). On Late Registration's "Addiction," Kanye the God-Fearing MC made his love of women (and money and weed) out to be a crippling vice. "DAHG" is the logical follow-up: a disoriented downward spiral. It's nice to hear guest singer Mos Def not suck on a song for the first time in years, too.

For all its little-brother charm, "Big Brother" also indirectly shines a spotlight on Jay's out-of-touch Kingdom Come–down. If that album showed how not to translate an unlikely tax bracket status to the masses, Graduation is the more appealing alternative. Of course, Jay is too icy and suited-up to admit to the complications Kanye gushes about constantly ("I never be picture-perfect Beyoncé," says Kanye on "Everything I Am"). And while Kanye will never be as technically gifted as his friend, his diary-entry style makes him markedly more relevant right now.

I keep getting caught up on "I Wonder." It has an odd structure: Kanye doesn't start to rap until the song is half finished. And when he does, the verses are seemingly incongruous: the first disjointed and unsettling ("The smoke screens, the chokes and the screams/You every wonder what it all really mean?"), the second cocksure ("Something in your blouse got me feelin' so arous'd"). It could be the most accurate reflection of fame on the record — half pissed off and burdensome, half touch-the-sky ecstasy. Meanwhile, the old-fashioned, haunting sample — "And I wonder if you know what it means to find your dreams" — is contrasted with space-age synths and a smokestack snare that wouldn't sound out of place on a Nine Inch Nails record. What does it all really mean? Hell if he knows.

From: Jon Dolan
To: Ryan Dombal

Dombal, you ignorant slut!

Just kidding. I agree with all this. (Just thought I'd insert a little Fox News in there.) Kanye gets to indulge his musical perversions in a way no rock stars have for about two decades (unless they transcend pop reality like R. Kelly or escape it like Axl Rose). It's a '70s Legend sort of way, in the way a guy like Van Morrison could make a record called A Period of Transition that was intended only as a way to get tens of thousands of people to pay to hear Van not know what kind of records to make. "DAHG" is that kind of song; he should've cut it after he realized it made John Mayer laugh a little too hard. Instead, him being Him, he pumps it up on the grandest scale possible — on a Hindenburg scale. Everything about "Drunk and Hot Girls" is inane — the Frankenstein-in-molasses beat, the kinda racist sample, the beat hilariously reflecting the tedium of his complaints about the Sisyphusian burden of having to clean up groupie puke, that he actually sings like a drunk and hot girl. Of course, it's vastly entertaining. I also love the way it somehow seamlessly transitions into an equally burdened song about a girl who spends Ye's bread, only this one's a woozy string-soaked earnest love ballad. "Hey, Mona Lisa, ya know you can't run without Caesar," he raps, without Googling for historical context. I guess in Kanye Land the past only occurs as it occurs to him.

You're right about "Big Brother," too. It's more devastating than the Kanye-produced Nas diss "Takeover," which its big slow-rock beat kinda recalls. It damns with hero worship ("Have you ever walked in the shadow of a giant") and it may be the most passive aggressive tribute song ever. It makes the giant seem like a statue because Jay-Z would never admit this kind of emotional confusion. Also, I love the dunk/finger roll line, as if Kanye is Dwayne Wade, whose mistakes are far more fun to watch than even Jay-Z's moments of Shaq-like power.

I keep listening to "Everything I Am." It's really pretty, and its narcissism is panoptical. It could be called "The 360 Degrees of Me," but almost every angle he observes himself from makes him wonder why he's in the world at all, what he's doing, what his essential contradiction — "everything I'm not made me everything I am" — leaves him with in a life of drunk and hot girls, gold diggers, so many brands names and lesbian strippers and so much time and career to burn.

Is "Barry Bonds" about needing performance enhancers to write hits? Can a congressional committee be convened to look into this?

From: Ryan Dombal
To: Jon Dolan

I wonder what Barry Bonds thinks of "Barry Bonds." Something tells me he's A) annoyed by it, B) confused by it or C) pissed every line in the song isn't about him. If there was an hour-long pay-per-view Kanye–Barry Bonds interview, I'd fork over $29.99 to watch it. And I don't give a shit about baseball.

Also, did Kanye ever really think that disco-dunce-meets-the-Terminator Grammy outfit was a good look or did he just wear it so he could say, "Yeah, at the Grammy's I went ultra Travolta/Yeah, that tuxedo mighta been a little Guido/But with my ego, I could stand there in a Speedo and be looked at like a fucking hero," on this record? If so, it was well worth it.

After bigging-up actress Cree Summer on The College Dropout's "Spaceship" and bragging, "In two years, Dwayne Wayne became Dwayne Wade" on Graduation's "Everything I Am," I think it's safe to say A Different World DVDs are in constant rotation on Ye's tour bus. I just looked up Kadeem "Dwayne Wayne" Hardison on IMDb ... He was last seen in the Bratz movie. That's depressing.

So, after three great records, what can this guy do next? Think up his own Trapped in the Closet à la Kells? Escape into dread-ed oblivion à la Axl? Start sampling Tangerine Dream and Amon Düül II? Jon, what say you?

From: Jon Dolan
To: Ryan Dombal

Kanye: By sneezing, I can make it rain Yen.
Bonds: Interesting, I can crush baby chicks just by thinking really hard.
Kanye: Huh? Sorry, I don't really keep up on current events.

The new Kanye album will not be an album. Albums will not be capable of capturing the essence of Tomorrow Kan. Tomorrow Kan will come upon us like the giant smoke monster thing on Lost, except it will be pink. Its first appearance will be at the 2007 Source Awards, where it will receive eleven awards and eat Usher.

The response to this will be somewhat mixed. Ne-Yo will go into hiding.