Charles Hughes writes:

In what must be 2007’s first bit of good news for the music business that hasn’t included the words “High School Musical,” hip-hop titans Kanye West and 50 Cent decided to release their new records on the same day, setting off a full-scale hype blitz that made last Tuesday into one of the only “must-buy” event days in recent memory.  Rolling Stone put the two titans on the cover, Vegas took bets, and—like any good election—a dark-horse candidate emerged, Kenny Chesney, who added his own considerable weight to the lollapalooza. Even more importantly, the ever-jaded blogosphere got firmly behind the contest, devoting extended attention, prediction and (occasionally) outright advocacy towards the showdown, and their favorite competitor.  This tactic appears to have worked, as all three releases are likely to boast first-week returns that are at the very highest end of the retail industry’s now-reduced expectations.

The reason for all this excitement seems far greater than an acknowledgement of how important the battle between Kanye and 50 is for a record industry currently in the middle stages of a complete collapse.  For many in the hip-hop audience, the comparative success of Graduation and Curtis represents a kind of referendum on the hip-hop nation, offering differing visions of where the music, and larger culture, is heading: As much as 50’s endlessly accessible, though thematically limited, street rhymes share with Kanye’s restless creative juxtapositions, they also differ sufficiently enough—in sonic characteristics and overall worldview—to make the contest more than just sheer hype.  I don’t want to overstate this, especially since most folks I know (including me) were interested in hearing both records, but to minimize this face-off would be to miss, and misread, an important cultural moment.

And, judging by nearly every opinion I’ve seen (including my own), Kanye has emerged as the clear early victor. His Graduation is a majestic collection, a celebration of life where each track weaves a tapestry of sounds and ideas that—in the greatest jazz traditions—sounds entirely new, yet equally as rooted in the past. Expansive tunes like “The Glory,” “Champion” and the surefire smash “Good Life” (with T-Pain, one of R&B’s best young voices) blend celebratory call-and-response with the string-and-horn-driven joy of early Motown or Philly.  True, West’s still not much of a rhymer, but he’s getting better, and he seems to have settled into a comfortable, simple flow that suits him well.  (On the thrusting rhymefest “Barry Bonds,” West even manages to hold his own next to the ever-brilliant Lil Wayne.)  Even the album’s weakest track, the awkward, skittering Mos Def collaboration “Drunk And Hot Girls,” can’t be faulted for lack of inventiveness.  (It’s too bad that ‘Ye and Mos didn’t put their other tag-team track, “Good Night,” on the official release, since it’s far superior.)  With guests as diverse as Coldplay’s Chris Martin and DJ Premier, and sample sources from Southern soul to Steely Dan, Graduation—like Kanye’s other records—is a grandly widescreen spectacle, with the whole world in its hands.

As playful as much of Graduation sounds, though, the lyrics mostly express a maturity that makes them equally forward-looking: West advises listeners to pursue the “good life,” and to grab it once they’ve found it, but—unlike many of his contemporaries, including 50 Cent—West offers a multifaceted portrait of success that makes room for both pleasure-seeking and consciousness-raising. Rather than weighing West down, this sense of perspective makes his giddy affirmations all the more infectious.  Of course, the blues are never far from the surface, and Kanye wisely uses his platform to point out the traps and temptations of the “good life” he elsewhere heralds: On the strangely mournful “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” Kanye flips the usual “I get money” script, bemoaning the fact that he “had a dream [he] could buy his way to heaven,” only to awake and “spend it on a necklace.”  (Black nationalism in the house, y’all…) 

The overriding tone of Graduation is…love. Love for oneself, one’s community, one’s culture and one’s compatriots, which is why I find it not at all surprising that West ends his album with “Big Brother,” an astonishing, 5-minute love letter to Jay-Z.  Here, West—unusually self-critical—beautifully relates his complicated relationship to his early idol, eventual client and current label-mate, and he doesn’t seem the least bit interested in trying to separate platonic love, familial respect and—dare I say it—homoerotic affection. 

(West’s infamous “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” was hugely important, but for my money it wasn’t half as daring as his contemporaneous criticisms of the homophobia within hip-hop, an open sore within the culture that remains ubiquitous enough to make the big-hearted blurring on “Big Brother” truly remarkable.)

All of the album’s best qualities are encapsulated on “Everything I Am,” a stately testimony that finds West (buttressed by graceful piano, moaning background vocals, and a deft Chuck D sample) asserting the legitimacy of his vision, which, he accurately points out, often gets criticized as neither “mainstream” nor “conscious” (or “white” and “black”) enough.  Gospel energy, bluesy recognition, jazz invention, and plenty of pomp-and-circumstance: a Graduation indeed, surely with honors.

By stark contrast, however, 50 Cent’s album doesn’t feel new or alive at all. In fact, it feels exhausted, redundant and played out. I really don’t have that much more to say about Curtis, and that’s not because 50 doesn’t occupy as significant a cultural position as Mr. West, because he does, no matter what happens in Billboard returns.  No, my apathy is basically a function of the fact that, as a piece of music, Curtis is about one one-hundreth as interesting as Graduation, and a good couple steps down from 50’s previous albums.  Even the best cuts sound like cheap Xeroxes of previous, better tracks like “In Da Club” or “21 Questions,” and “Amusement Park,” one of the many singles which 50’s label unsuccessfully trotted out in the months leading up to Curtis’ release, is truly nothing more than a cheap, obvious attempt to rework his hit “Candy Shop,” except, this time, both the metaphors and the beats are much weaker, making a track that should be bubbling, raunchy fun into something foul and pathetic. By remaining wedded to the same musical and thematic palette, 50 Cent has degraded the initial, seismic impact of his gritty blues into a paint-by-numbers retread of gun fetish, hedonism and macho posturing.  The guest appearances of Timberlake, Timbaland and Mary J. Blige just make even clearer how much more interesting and innovative each of these guests are than anything their host puts forward on Curtis.

As of now, Kanye appears to have triumphed in the commercial, as well as critical, battle. Early projections have him trouncing 50 in first-week sales, and his two singles, “Can’t Tell Me Nothin’” and the propulsive “Stronger,” have each performed far better than any of the multiple singles which 50’s thrown into the ring, failing to gain traction with any of them, and looking increasingly desperate in the process. Of course, 50’s doing fine, with an audience that’s proven large and loyal in the past. (And Kenny Chesney ain’t going away, either…) Regardless of who emerges victorious, either in the short or long term, the contest between Kanye West and 50 Cent has not only given the record business a blast of fresh energy that it desperately needed, but it’s also crystallized an important moment of pop-culture transition, where two leading figures in pop music vie to point the way towards the road ahead.

I’m sincerely happy that I live in a world where Kanye West and 50 Cent are on such equal footing, since we need them both. Still, at the end of the day, I want to live in Kanye’s world, and I want to go to his parties.  As he says in “Good Life,” “let’s go on a livin’ spree.”  Amen.  Let’s get it on.

Kanye West “Good Morning” and “Everything I Am” from Graduation (Roc-A-Fella Records, 2007)

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