Kanye's mixtape makes for marvelous music

Musicals are known as plays on Broadway or the Disney channel and tells a story through music. Kanye West put a whole new meaning to the term “musical.” He has done it again, but this time in a mixtape musical.

Mixtapes are released by artists and their purpose is to “diss” or trash another artist or to rap on some other artist’s beats.  The purpose of Kanye’s mixtape was to show people that he was a different type of artist; he was a real artist.

His new mixtape is titled “Graduation: The Musical” and features ten singles which were previewed on all three of his last albums. What makes them different is he sampled all the beats from old songs, such as Steely Dan’s “Champion,” Michael Jackson’s “Good Life,” and Curtis Mayfield’s “Touch the Sky.” After listening to this mixtape, I realized that Kanye West was robbed of the Grammy for Album of the Year. In this mixtape, he was not only extremely unique, but he brought back and, in a way, saved these old classics. I mean if it weren’t for Kanye, I wouldn’t know who the heck Steely Dan was. For example, his song “I Wonder” was taken from a man named Labbi Stiffre. The original song sounds like a song that would be used for a Willie Wonka movie, but Kanye sped up the beat, added synthesizers, and then added a lot of bass. The song went from a Wonka classic to a hip-hop classic.
Take a look at hip-hop these days. Nas said “Hip-Hop is dead.” In a way, it is, but Kanye West is one of the few artists that brings back that essence of music into the music industry.

It is an art form that only few can do and Kanye really saves the classics.This art is difficult to produce because Kanye has to go through a lot of work. He needs to: find old classics, listen to them, switch up the beat and give it a new twist with amazing beats, sounds and rhythm. Kanye not only makes his own beats for himself and others, but his rhymes come from true life experiences. On Graduation: The Musical, his songs are all just so bone chilling because they make you think about life, what it means, and why Kanye is just so different form other artists.
Kanye not only showed his production skills in this mixtape, but his rhymes are truly amazing because they come from the heart and not the mind. His raps are basically poetry sped up. To listen to this mixtape go to www.dapiff.com.

Being able to match rhymes with a beat from the ’90s is a difficult task, as it requires a focus on the lyrics more than the beat itself. While Kanye West is known for his great beats, he shows that he can excel lyrically as well as instrumentally, much like another throwback artist, Lupe Fiasco.

Kanye West brings back the hip-hop of old, when music was not all about dancing to a beat, but about listening to the lyrics and relating it to your own struggles.

Although Kanye did not win a Grammy for Album of the Year, his skillful rhyming  as well as his musical prowess are sure to  win him many awards to come.