Still, that's lyrics. Let's talk production.

Quite frankly, the thing glitters, shimmies and pounds. Even on the seventh and eighth listen on headphones, my disappointment in the rhymes and egocentricity peaking, there are always the songs, the sounds. That's what spares West the fate of so many fantastic rappers, who can live or die by their beats, no matter how fluid their flow — West has never given himself a dull track to rhyme over. On Champion, a straightforward Steely Dan sample whips back to attention with awesome rhythmic effect, like a soldier pounding tarmac. On Barry Bonds, West shapes a deep groove keys/bass/drums pattern, then adds doom-laden strings for chorus effect. As bad as the rapping on the track is (a particularly noxious West brag, and a weak Lil' Wayne guest verse), the song is utterly compelling. And then there's Can't Tell Me Nothing, another gratuitous boast made delectable with its gorgeous synth arrangement, and the seductive Flashing Lights.

With all this bile wrapped in sugar, it makes for a quintessential hip-hop experience, at least to my conflicted ears: stunning production wasted on frequently noxious sentiments. Even by the standard bad rap (no pun intended) hip-hop gets for parent-worrying 'negative content', I'll take the nihilism of a Clipse over the self-infatuation of Kanye. At least the Clipse is some kind of fantasy-addled street report, coupled with the Thornton twin's poisoned cup of half-pride, half-shame. Graduation could do with a few of Hell Hath No Fury's stomach pains.

How fitting, really, that Jay-Z should haunt the album. If there's one megalomaniac to match West's own bombast, it's Mr. Carter (The Blueprint, still one of the greatest hip-hop records of all time, is basically a king's victory march over 13 tracks, and it'll never make U Don't Know or Heart of The City sound any less compelling to my ears). From the Graduation opener Good Morning, which samples Blueprint's opener The Ruler's Back for melancholy and ironic effect (while setting off a intertextual rockslide strong enough to flatten a village) to the closer Big Brother, a song about West's fanboy (if ambiguous) friendship with Jay-Z, it's all a bit much, quite frankly. While you've got to applaud the weakness and breathlessness he unashamedly displays on the track, (always one of his biggest strengths in a genre terrified of anything even vaguely resembling emotional fragility) it all feels a little reverse-nepotistic, and shut in. Maybe it's time for him to step out of the studio and take in some fresh air. If he can make the trip without the private jet, the obligatory models and the Luis Vuitton, all the better. But one step at a time.

So there you go — petulance, some pleasing noises (music, if you will), $18 dollars — a massive hype-laden ball of contradictions and talent. Maybe I should shelve it for six months and then see how it sounds.

NOTES

There's a couple of songs I didn't mention that I'd like to, and I didn't feel like trying to jam them into the body of the review, or get swayed from my finger-wagging job, re: Mr. West's swelled head, so here goes.

First off, I Wonder, a slow number and the kind of introspective song West usually pulls off quite gracefully (Dropout's Family Business is the highpoint of this style). But again, something's wrong on this track, which just hangs there in self-pity (we don't appreciate Kanye enough, apparently, though I could have sworn my three purchases so far were about as much as a man could do). The problem with I Wonder is the hook — once he loops the sample, there isn't much 'new' to the song, apart from the average string arrangement. It's all a bit — underwhelming, a bit basic. I feel like Simon Reynolds confronted with Jay-Z's Takeover — awed, but feeling slightly guilty for pointing out that, production wise, it's a rapper picking up a paycheck over someone else's work. I know the 'is sampling stealing?' debate is old and tired, and should be left to crankier guitarist critics anyways, but Stronger doesn't make the question any less relevant. It's West's second biggest hit now, after Gold Digger , but where that song toyed with its source material brilliantly, this one is just Daft Punk with some tweaks. It sounds like a mixtape track, not a No. 1 single.

Then there's Drunk and Hot Girls, the song that has fanboy critics in a spin for the coolness (no other word would do) of it's sample: Can's Sing Swan Song. Well, yes, bravo for the originality of the choice and all that, but, honestly, what has West really done with Damo's original ghostly vocal? He's retained the melody and track's rhythmic impetus, and just changed the words. It's clever enough, and the track arrangement is dense and swaying enough to satisfactorily match the intoxicated lyrical content, but apart from the Middle Eastern-sounding string counter melody which arrives in the second half of the song, there's once again a dearth of what you could bitchily label 'original content'. It's really a matter of whether the samples are treated and re-imagined, or merely become a second song without ever shedding their original skin. On Champion, I'll give Kanye the points for a great use of another artist. On Drunk and Hot Girls, I'll reach for the skip button.

A final point of positivity, about one of the album's best tracks, Everything I Am. A gorgeous piano melody, some perfectly integrated (and understated) record scratching, and one of West's most tolerably self-obsessed lyrics. The backing vocals on the chorus deliver the single-tear heartbreak, and overall, it's just lovely. I just didn't want to end things on an overly negative point — after all, I've played this thing more than almost any other record this apart from The National's Boxer and Dungen's Tio Bitar. So there you have it. But does multiple spins equally quality, or a fan looking for diamonds?