Kanye west graduation album cover alternate

#Kanye west graduation album cover alternate series

He samples Elton John and Mountain and includes a piano jam, Homecoming, featuring Coldplay's Chris Martin, which recalls early Billy Joel. To date his most successful songs - Jesus Walks, All Falls Downand Gold Digger - have centered on larger ideas, but overall the tracks on Graduation are less conceptual, and less orchestrated, than his previous work.

His current single, Stronger, which samples the innovative French DJ duo Daft Punk, has been well received. While other hip-hop stars (50 Cent, Timbaland) have been flirting lately with pop collaborations to extend their brands, West has succeeded in large part by imposing his ornate style of hip-hop onto the mainstream.ДЄnd sometimes on rap fans as well. Rap loyalists may blanch at his new directions, but West has never been solely beholden to rap fans or to rap modes of thought. But given the double-digit decline in rap sales this year and West's status as one of few bankable hip-hop superstars, it's a potentially risky time to be broadening, or diluting, his palette. West is no longer just concerned with being popular he also wants to be cool.

Galifianakis lip-synchs to the song as he drives a tractor, accompanied by indie-rocker Will Oldham and a troupe of clog dancers. He nods to hipster culture with an album cover designed by Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami and an alternate video for Can't Tell Me Nothing starring the alternative comedian Zach Galifianakis,who filmed it at his North Carolina farm after he was personally solicited by West. And these musical shifts coincide with West's developing interests in other areas. It is his most eclectic album, drawing on a wide musical palette, including classic rock and dance music. In part Graduation is the product of those efforts. 'Certain ways that I approached things, I could have done it with more tact and more class.' West, 30, began to re-examine every aspect of his career, from his music to his image to his fashion sense.

#Kanye west graduation album cover alternate series

It was one in a series of regrettable events and choices that brought out the relentless self-questioner in him.

'It was like I had killed somebody,' he said. Kicking off a pair of silver Yves Saint Laurent high-top sneakers, he compared himself to a giant stomping on 'the people's champ.' The day after the awards, he said, he holed up in his hotel room, chastened, ruminating over the bad press. In honour of a new book from Taschen, Art Record Covers, by art historian Francesco Spampinato, whichВ looks at the history of album artwork from the 1950s to today,В we chart ten moments where art captured the essence of a musical era.'A complete momentum killer' is how West sheepishly described the incident one recent evening as he relaxed at Chung King Studios in New York, where he was finishing his third album, Graduation, due Tuesdayon Def Jam Records. Some covers are more well known вЂ“В such as Andy WarholвЂ™s pop art banana for The Velvet UndergroundвЂ™s debut album in 1967, The Velvet Underground & Nico, and some are less Ella FitzgeraldвЂ™s 23rd album, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Harold Arlen SongbookВ (1961), for instance, which features a drawingВ by Henri Matisse. In 1983, Jean-Michel BasquiatВ captured the essence of hip-hop when he drewВ an urban hieroglyph for the single вЂњBeat BopвЂќ and in the 00s, at PolaroidвЂ™s peak, controversial photographer and filmmaker of TulsaВ (1971) and KidsВ (1995)В fame, Larry ClarkВ provided one of his snaps for model-turned-musician Jonathan Velasquez's Solo, as an extension of his film Wassup RockersВ (2005), in which Velasquez starred. For decades, cover art collaborations have provided alternative ways for artists to distribute their work beyond the gallery walls, and some of the most notable collaborations have been truly era-defining. Art and music have always been bedfellows, a relationship that has seen creativity cross-pollinate fromВ canvas, celluloid and film with club scenes, live shows and hardcopy recordings.